![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, June 16, 2010
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
NVIDIA ForceWare 257.21 Driver Performance
NVIDIA’s new ForceWare 257.21 WHQL driver takes a giant leap in version numbers, but does it take a giant leap in real-world gaming performance? We found at least one scenario where it does! You surely don’t want to miss the giant leap in Transparency Antialiasing performance experienced in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Introduction
On June, 15th NVIDIA published new graphics card drivers, ForceWare 257.21 WHQL. This is a very large version number difference from the previous driver which was 197.75 WHQL on May the 10th. A big version change must mean a whole lot of performance improvements right? Well indeed, NVIDIA has provided numerious performance improvements with this driver as well as support for some new technologies.
There are too many to list here, we suggest you read this page and check out the bulleted list of items. Don’t forget to look at the "Additional Information" section on the bottom too, as it describes even more features supported.
Today’s testing is simple, we are going to take a handful of current AAA games and test in an apples-to-apples real world gaming scenario and compare the performance of this new driver versus the previous WHQL driver.
Test System is specified below, a single GeForce GTX 480 is used for all testing.
Driver Versions
Above you can see all the various component versions between the two drivers for comparison.
Aliens vs. Predator
Right off the bat in this DX11 game we are seeing an almost 12% performance improvement with the new ForceWare 257.21 driver version compared to the previous driver. This is at a high resolution with AA and DX11 Tessellation enabled. NVIDIA claims a 14% performance improvement on their driver page, so we are very near what NVIDIA are seeing here.
Metro 2033
In Metro 2033 we aren’t really seeing much performance difference. There is only a very slight improvement in the average framerate that falls too close inside the margin for error to call this an improvement. NVIDIA claims a 7% performance improvement at the settings of 1920x1200 no AA/16xAF, but they don’t specify what in-game quality setting. Here, we are using the highest "Very High" quality setting to push the video card, and really, who isn’t going to play at "Very High" on the GTX 480 since it is capable of doing it? Our in-game quality setting we tested at here is what the playable settings are at this resolution on this video card and is a real-world setting.
Crysis: Warhead
In Crysis: Warhead we are seeing another very small difference, just like Metro 2033. Albeit, the general performance is consistently higher here, than it was in Metro 2033. NVIDIA claimed only a small 4% improvement in this game anyway at these very settings, and we are seeing closer to 3% difference, so not too far off. I think we can safely say we are tapped on what we are going to get out of Crysis: Warhead performance-wise. The game is about as fast as it is ever going to get on these latest generations of video cards.