It seems that nVidia has seriously begun to develop the DirectX 9 part of their drivers. 44.90 and 45.20 were leaked out on the Internet not a long time ago, and both of them seems to be a step forward.
Dark Crow has compared some results from a few DirectX9 demos here.
If you want to download 45.20 it is available on our server here. The file is nevertheless rather big (20MB), and does not even contain a Setup. You must install it through the device manager (explained in the Readme.txt).
nVNews has got a rather “interesting” image of nVidia. Take a look here.
Update: I just realized that 45.20 is based on a Quadro driver. The Quadro drivers are intended for nVidia’s professional graphic cards, this may be the reason of why they are “clean”. We will all see when next official Detonator is announced.