Following an unexpected mechanical issue that led to a delay and an eventual price break, Nvidia's Shield gaming system is now shipping. One of the key features of the Shield is the ability to stream games from your PC directly to the device over Wi-Fi. In order to utilize that feature, however, you'll need a compatible Nvidia graphics card and naturally, drivers that support streaming.

Nvidia comes to the rescue just in the nick of time with a new set of beta GeForce drivers. Version 326.41 beta is the first to publically support Shield streaming and as a beta, Nvidia also points out on the Shield product page that streaming will be a beta feature initially.

Enabling Shield streaming is the main purpose of the driver release although we're told the software is also recommended as a display driver for those running Microsoft's Windows 8.1 Preview.

Otherwise, the driver includes the same performance enhancements found in Nvidia's 326.19 beta released earlier this month. That includes up to a 15 percent performance increase in Dirt: Showdown and a six percent boost in Tomb Raider for GTX 770 owners and up to a 19 percent boost in Dirt: Showdown and an 11 percent performance increase in F1 2012 for those running two GTX 770s in SLI.

If you have a Shield on the way or are running Windows 8.1 Preview, you'll want to go ahead and download the drivers. Just choose your operating system: Windows Vista/7/8 32-bit or Windows Vista/7/8 64-bit.