GeForce 196.75 WHQL: Up to 30% increase in performance

[cegras]

You don't get something for nothing.

[Hu1kamania]

No issues here with the new drivers. Saw a nice improvement in Vantage with and without physX. Crysis, Bioshock 2 and BFBC2 all ran just fine. This is with tri-sli 275's and Win7 64-bit.

[DarthBeavis]

Just installed and played L4D2 on my Asus 1201N netbook (dual core Atom, ION, 2 gigs of ram, 1366x768 res I think) and it playable. THis is the only rig I will have for my personal use while on a nice 3-5 week tour with Nvidia I have to start next week. Installing the new AVP game to see if it will play as well.

[Chrono Detector]

I installed this and I'm still getting 30-40FPS on BC2 on my 275 GTX on my i7 rig, WTF? I'm seeing no improvement at all.

[Decami]

well i loaded the drivers and had no issues, some improvements in most games as well.

one thing that pissed me off though, after installing them it would NOT at all let me use 1920x1080 @60hz with 32 bit color on my samsung tv. I noticed aero wasnt working the colors were off, went into the control panel and it was 1920x1080 @60hz 16bit color. changed to 32 bit color and it changed 60hz to 24hz, then changed that to 60hz and applied and it forced it into 1920x1080 @24hz 32 bit . i couldnt have both 32bit color and 60hz, damn driver, so i made a custom resolution of 1920x1080 @60hz 32bit color and that fixed it.

[rouge]

Drivers are working fine for me with a single GTX-260, W7 64. No improvement for me in L4D2 and only a small bump in Vantage, less than 100 points. I'm gonna try a few games later, but I'm not expecting much.

[RAW-Raptor22]

Installing on my 7950 GX2 and GTX 285 SLI PCs. I will test Crysis Warhead on both PCs and see what the performance change is.

[SocketMan]

There is a driver sub-forum,no offence
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...splay.php?f=64

30% increase from what? an IGP,a 7600gt, a GTX295 etc..

[Chrono Detector]

These drivers are indeed horrible. First when I extracted the files from the .exe file, my anti virus scanner reported the setup.exe had a virus in it... WTF, and second whenever I played any video file with Media Classic Player the video file is laggy and I would have to restart the player in order to get it working normally again. Avoid installing this, I had to go back to the previous version.

[jmke]

most likely these improvements are had under certain conditions.

[Zloyd]

anyone tried this with win7 32 ? Wonder if it will increase 295 performance well ill try it out later today.

[YukonTrooper]

As long as these are performance increases in NEW games it is great. Otherwise, I don't want to see yet another 20% bump in Far Cry 2....

I've actually had a problem with new drivers significantly dropping performance in old games (see Oblivion.) Although, I definitely wouldn't consider Far Cry 2 old.

[Trembledust]

Tried the drivers. Did see a bump in FPS in BC2. Went from max fps being around lower 90's to 128 fps. Avg 70-80 prior to these drivers. With these drivers 80-90. Now with these drivers Evga Precision wasnt working cause drivers were too new so I was running the cards stock vs. running them with my usually lil oc with the last beta drivers (700/1550/1220) In game settings were AA @ 8xQ, hbao on, everything on high yadda yadda yadda with 1920 x 1200 res. Didn't really notice a diff in IQ with these vs. the 196.34 betas. Pretty damn good results with stock cards IMO but got some bad in game crashing. That's the deal breaker. Happened liked 3x. No bsod's though.

Previously I was playing BC2 SP for like 3hrs straight with the 196.34 betas and didn't get one crash. Soon as I installed the new drivers within say 15 mins in game, crash. I uninstalled the new drivers and installed the last official NV drivers with EVGA SLI Patch and didn't have any of the funky crashes I was getting with the 196.75 drivers.

Tried Mass Effect 2 with 196.75 drivers too. Sli profile my a$$ lol. Never broke 62 fps. Then again couldn't break 62 fps with Mass 2 with the evga sli patch for the last official drivers either so eh. Didn't get any in game crashes though. Truth be told soon as I saw I wasn't breaking 62 fps didn't bother playing long. Probably 10 mins max.


P.S. this was on Windows 7 64 bit.

Update: Reinstalled new drivers. Evga Precision does seem to support the newer drivers. Wierd I thought it didnt the first time. So that bump in FPS was with the cards at my usual oc, not stock.

[zalbard]

Guys, it's not 30% performance improvement in ALL games, just a few titles...

[Olivon]

I have installed this drivers yesterday's night. No real problems, everything seems ok (BF2:BC2, Bioshock 2, DIRT II, Borderlands ...) and no need to reboot, that's cool !

[Macadamia]

Tried the drivers. Did see a bump in FPS in BC2. Went from max fps being around lower 90's to 128 fps. Avg 70-80 prior to these drivers. With these drivers 80-90. Now with these drivers Evga Precision wasnt working cause drivers were too new so I was running the cards stock vs. running them with my usually lil oc with the last beta drivers (700/1550/1220) In game settings were AA @ 8xQ, hbao on, everything on high yadda yadda yadda with 1920 x 1200 res. Didn't really notice a diff in IQ with these vs. the 196.34 betas. Pretty damn good results with stock cards IMO but got some bad in game crashing. That's the deal breaker. Happened liked 3x. No bsod's though.

Previously I was playing BC2 SP for like 3hrs straight with the 196.34 betas and didn't get one crash. Soon as I installed the new drivers within say 15 mins in game, crash. I uninstalled the new drivers and installed the last official NV drivers with EVGA SLI Patch and didn't have any of the funky crashes I was getting with the 196.75 drivers.

Tried Mass Effect 2 with 196.75 drivers too. Sli profile my a$$ lol. Never broke 62 fps. Then again couldn't break 62 fps with Mass 2 with the evga sli patch for the last official drivers either so eh. Didn't get any in game crashes though. Truth be told soon as I saw I wasn't breaking 62 fps didn't bother playing long. Probably 10 mins max.


P.S. this was on Windows 7 64 bit.

Your issue with Mass Effect 2 is that the game engine caps framerate at 62fps.

And seriously... if "beta" drivers on the nVidia side are that crashtastic I don't think I'm switching back. I have a near-zero tolerance for crashes, waste of time and happiness :/

[Anemic]

Who need a 28% SLI boost in L4D when it runs fine on most computers? I will have to try it when I get home tho!

[FlawleZ]

I installed this and I'm still getting 30-40FPS on BC2 on my 275 GTX on my i7 rig, WTF? I'm seeing no improvement at all.

What settings?

[JohnZS]

These drivers are fantastic for me
3d marks did not change much, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat has no stutter and a frame rate boost too
GTA IV also received a slight performance increase too.
Left 4 Dead which has always been smooth is still smooth, but now I can crank up the FSAA some more and still enjoy the same level of smoothness.
IMHO these are the first Forceware 195+ drivers which are actually consistently good across the board.
John

[lutjens]

I wonder what slight of hand was used to attain this...something has been compromised somewhere...probably image quality (again). It seems odd that NVidia would just miraculously look at the drivers and say "Wow, here's an extra 30% performance that we missed earlier."

It seems more like NVidia is resorting to the tech equivalent of dropping weight on a vehicle by lessening the graphical load that the card has deal with. The question is, what did they drop to attain this?

[Jokester_wild]

no score improvement in vantage. GTX260 win 7 64. No instability though as a couple people have mentioned.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Guys, it's not 30% performance improvement in ALL games, just a few titles...

Up to a 30% increase in a couple of games.

[RPGWiZaRD]

If NVIDIA states 30% performance increase in a certain game it means 15% increase in that game if you're lucky, otherwise expect 5~10% or so and in some other games if you're lucky up to 3~5% increase at most, but hey free performance upgrades doesn't cost anything...

[Sentential]

One full check disk; manual driver removal from device manager and manual install of the lastest driver later all is well. Good god I was || close to buying an HD5870.

[Trembledust]

Your issue with Mass Effect 2 is that the game engine caps framerate at 62fps.

And seriously... if "beta" drivers on the nVidia side are that crashtastic I don't think I'm switching back. I have a near-zero tolerance for crashes, waste of time and happiness :/

Actually its my fault. When I saw sli profile I automatically assumed, which I think almost anyone who has a multi gpu system would assume, that with the introduction of a sli profile for the game, the game's frame rate would increase. Of course this didnt seem to be the case. Now the drivers which included the sli profile for Mass Effect 2 also indicated something to give the game AA support which it natively doesnt have. My guess is that with the introduction of AA to the game, u may find it harder to achieve that capped 62 fps limit. In order to compensate they added sli support for the game. Its a theory but I am finding it hard to believe Mass Effect 2 with AA would stress a single GPU to the point that u couldnt get 62 fps. Especially a 200 series card. Again its just a theory. I honestly dont see a reason to give a game a sli profile if the profile does not increase the games FPS. That would be like giving Street Fighter IV a sli / crossfire profile but keeping the frame cap its current 62. Eh watever. Of course there are ways to get rid of that capped limit. Muahahahahaha.

In regards to your comment about the "beta" drivers. That's just it...they aren't betas. They are officials lol. Check Nv's site. I hear u though @ crashes. Doubt anyone likes those if the crashes aren't their fault. Even when they are thier fault they dont like them lol

I'll try the new drivers maybe this weekend. Do a driver sweep of old drivers etc. Want to finish the SP of BC2 first.