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Nvidia has released new beta drivers offering GeForce 400, 500 and 600 series owners up to 18% more performance depending on the title and settings. In a blog post, Nvidia published some of its own tests in which the GTX 680 saw a 17.6% boost over last month's 301.42 WHQL release in Batman: Arkham City, 12.4% in Dragon Age 2, 9.8% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat and 4% in Lost Planet 2 when running the games on high or max settings. A 5.8% to 15% bump was recorded with a second GTX 680 in SLI.
As a second example, Nvidia shared the GTX 560's results when shifting to the beta drivers, including 14% more performance in Arkham City, 6.7% in Lost Plane 2 and 5.5% in Dragon Age 2. When paired with another GTX 560, the combo delivers 11.9% more frames in Arkham City, 5.2% in Battlefield 3, 6.1% in Dragon Age 2, 4% in Lost Planet 2, 5.3% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat and 7.9% in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Nvidia's article provides more information about how each game was configured.
The beta release also fixes a bug in Shogun 2: Total War that reduced frame rates by up to 60%, another that caused intermittent vsync stuttering with GTX 600 series cards as well as a bug that prevented some overclocked cards from running at their higher clocks. Nvidia has also added or improved a handful of new SLI and 3D Vision profiles for games including Torchlight II, Tribes: Ascend, F1 2011, Planetside 2, Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, and The Walking Dead.
Download GeForce 304.48 Beta (release notes -- read the download pages, no PDF available)
Desktop: Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Mobile: Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Download GeForce 302.80 WHQL (release notes)
Desktop: Windows 8 32-bit | Windows 8 64-bit
Mobile: Windows 8 32-bit | Windows 8 64-bit
Download GeForce 301.42 WHQL (release notes)
Desktop: Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Mobile: Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Meanwhile, Diablo III, L.A. Noire, Rayman Origins, and The Secret World have gained antialiasing support in the Nvidia Control Panel, and Star Wars: The Old Republic's ambient occlusion can be set in the Nvidia Control Panel. FXAA, Nvidia's antialiasing solution, has been disabled in Windows programs like Media Player and Movie Maker. Although FXAA has been well-received, its effects were being applied to Windows applications when set to run globally, making text difficult or impossible to read.
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User Comments: 10
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in other news .. AMD is now even slowing then the competition !
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When was the last time a Catalyst update said something about more performance?
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Having owned an AMD card for nearly a year, I can assure you--now that I've owned an Nvidia card for nearly as much--that AMD's driver support is not even close to Nvidia's, especially now since their "monthly" updates are out the window.
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My last two cards have been AMD and I keep trying to go back to Nvidia for driver reasons, but every time I need a card AMD has always had better options available, which makes it difficult. Like right now I've been wanting a new card in the midrange for months, but Nvidia are still dragging their heels with a GTX 660 or similar. So it's either drop down to last generation and get a 560/ti/570 which I'll instantly regret when the Kepler midrange successor comes out, or go with AMD yet again and get a 7850 or thereabouts, which is more likely. I guess I'll give it a few more weeks before deciding.
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LNCPapa said:
I'm confused - the 570 is faster than the 7850 but you'd rather get the 7850 anyway even though the 570 is an option within that class - simply because the 660 isn't out yet? The 570 can be had for only a $10 premium over the 7850.
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Hmm, the price difference is more like £40 here, which doesn't justify the increase in FPS (which was pretty small in the benchmarks I checked out).
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Or "isn't justified by", rather.
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LNCPapa said:
Oh - I didn't consider the price difference where you are (I'm such an egghead). I guess if temps and overclocking are important the 7850 is better as well.
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HD7850 overclocks really well and has 2GB of VRAM. I wouldn't touch a 1.28GB 570 with a 30 foot pole. By next year that card is paperweight for 1080P while an overclocked 7850 will approach a GTX580/7950 in performance and won't run of memory. Tons of games are now pushing over 1GB of VRAM. It's only a matter of time before 1.28GB is a bottleneck at 1080P at which point the GPU speed of the 570 won't do much.
Also, GTX660 is rumored to be delayed until August since there are 120,000 units of inventory of GTX570 cards. I would just grab an HD7850 and not bother waiting, especially since all indicators point to GTX660 launching at $299, while HD7850 is often found on sale for much less than that.
Also, I have a feeling by August, we'll see HD7950 hit the $300 range making GTX660 once again irrelevant. Newegg just had an HD7950 for $304 which is a sign for more sales to come. The current 7950/7970 will need to drop in price or be cleared once the higher speed binned XT2 chip is ready to launch within a month.
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On the other hand, AMD drops the support for cards and starts to deliver drivers two times a year... Thank God I moved to nVidia in time! =)
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