NVidia driver 337.50 beta released!

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Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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Anyone want to try them? http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/74735

I personally stay away from nVidia beta drivers, having been burned several times in the past.

I went for a comparison in the game nvidia claimed the largest performance increase in :

Up to 64% in Total War: Rome II
Installed the latest WHQL drivers first for my first run and then used these new betas.

I got nothing performance wise. Nothing, zip, zilcho... no performance gains... :confused: Well .3 fps increase...

335.23 Driver

IRQct7e.jpg



337.50 Driver

EyWifdH.jpg




Nothing. Maybe the claimed performance gains come with the usual caveat that you have to run them at a specific resolution, with certain settings disabled (mine are all maxed), in a specific part of the game and while standing on one leg.

Would of expected to at least see some improvement with such huge gains claimed.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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desprado

Golden Member
Jul 16, 2013
1,645
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So far i have benched only Sleeping dogs and Metro last light
Sleeping Dogs
335.23 121fps
337.50 144fps

Metro last light
335.23 54 fps
337.25 58.1 fps
 

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
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English only:

x32:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe
x64:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe

I found the official links at guru3d forums.

Users there are saying the same thing, no real gains as claimed. Some of them tested multiple games. I'm too lazy and just did the one. Must be very narrow situations where these huge gains are seen.

Maybe your massive GPU overclock, for the most part, cancels out the CPU driver overhead?
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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Maybe your massive GPU overclock, for the most part, cancels out the CPU driver overhead?

Eh, usually the more GPU power you give, the more CPU power you require to take full use of it. In the Valley benchmark I gain 5-10FPS for every 100Mhz I add over 4.6Ghz on my CPU.

70% gains claimed in Rome 2 and I got less than 1% of a gain...

I never expected these drivers to deliver what was claimed. It's just not realistic to expect those sorts of gains out of just a driver update. Even Mantle, which is an entirely distinct and custom API baked in on a game by game basis, only gives about 10% more performance on high end setups. There was no way a simple driver update was going to be able to do anything like that in games that have already received driver optimizations.

Maybe someone can try something like BF4 on all low settings @ 1080P on a powerful GPU setup and see if there are the kinds of 50%+ gains Mantle gives in those CPU limited situations.

The driver must do something for all the PR about it. Maybe it just needs to be tested in whatever specific scenarios it actually makes a difference under.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,003
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I was wondering what the hell was going on as I've been getting those pauses as well. I've been playing online lately and thought it was some sort of lag or problem with my router. I didn't think it could of been a driver issue.
Have you had any pauses with these new beta drivers?
 

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
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Eh, usually the more GPU power you give, the more CPU power you require to take full use
The driver must do something for all the PR about it. Maybe it just needs to be tested in whatever specific scenarios it actually makes a difference under.

Yeah it's probably at 1080p low / medium settings where the most gains will be had - just like with Mantle BF4.
 

96Firebird

Diamond Member
Nov 8, 2010
5,742
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Groove, looks like Ryan Smith got a 70% boost in Rome 2 with his 780 Ti SLI setup, wonder why you can't get the same?

What are your reference drivers? Ryan is using the fairly old 331...
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
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Groove, looks like Ryan Smith got a 70% boost in Rome 2 with his 780 Ti SLI setup, wonder why you can't get the same?

What are your reference drivers? Ryan is using the fairly old 331...

Look at the single card gains with a 780ti, non-existent like mine were. The 780ti SLI gain is because they just added an SLI profile to this driver, previously SLI didn't work in the game.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
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Have you had any pauses with these new beta drivers?

Yes they seem to be fixed. I was getting the pauses in Diablo 3 about every 10-15 minutes. Game would just freeze, still had sound, then continue in a few seconds. Hasn't been happening with these drivers in the hour or so I played this morning.
 

parvadomus

Senior member
Dec 11, 2012
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Haha the QX9650 results shows how well it removed the CPU bottleneck in games. Its MILES away from Mantle, the Nvidia PR was at best disgusting this time.
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
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It's not often you see 10% improvement with single cards (Not in everything, but still...). Multi GPU sure, but not single. Some of the claimed gains understandably had people excited. It was supposed to be the Mantle killer. The hype and PR were just over the top, which is too bad because it detracts from what is an excellent performance driver.
 

96Firebird

Diamond Member
Nov 8, 2010
5,742
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Look at the single card gains with a 780ti, non-existent like mine were. The 780ti SLI gain is because they just added an SLI profile to this driver, previously SLI didn't work in the game.

Oh I see, so the results were only because an SLI profile were added... I just looked at your sig and saw 780 Ti SLI, so those are the results I looked at.
 

AdamK47

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
15,782
3,606
136
Rome II has improved quite a bit for me. All four Titans are being used during the forest benchmark.

Settings @ 2560x1600:
2014-04-07_00003.jpg~original


Results:
2014-04-07_00004.jpg~original
 

el etro

Golden Member
Jul 21, 2013
1,584
14
81
Seems that bring performance gains to all games, and in some cases hit the "up to" performance gains expectations.