Quote Originally Posted by Carfax View Post
You make it seem like it's impossible, when it's already happened before.

I gave a specific example even. Any long time buyer of Nvidia cards will remember when the Geforce 3 series first came out, it was barely faster than the Geforce 2 series that it was replacing.....until Nvidia released the new Detonator 20xx drivers that boosted performance by an average of 20 to 30%, and up to 40% and 50% in some cases..

So yes, it can happen. Driver optimizations can make a huge difference in performance, especially if the architecture is radically different from the previous generation; which Fermi happens to be.
Problem is that driver releases have matured a lot since the days of the GeForce 2/3. Major bosts in individual games certainly exist, but long-term performance improvements across the board are not in the 20-30% range any longer