Nvidia WHQL Drivers Due in afew days!

[hokies83]

Seems Nvidia has been listening to us performance Enhancing Drivers are due very soon.

Source ---> http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4396007&postcount=14

 

[Majcric]

Interesting. But I didn't see anything about the performance being enhanced.

 

[Gryz]

Tomorrow is the official release of Guild Wars 2. Headstart was last weekend. I wouldn't be surprised if 1-2 million people will be playing GW2 this week. A majority of them have nVidia cards (I'd guess).

Supposedly the current beta drivers give a 30% fps boost in GW2, over the last official drivers (301.42). For some cards (500 and 600 series).
Here's a link with charts.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/bill-freist-talks-optimization-and-performance/

BTW, nVidia just released another beta-driver. 306.02
Hokies link is a link to a specific post in that same thread.
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-306-02-beta-drivers-released/

 

[RussianSensation]

Considering GW2 can be maxed out on a $230 HD7870, gaining more performance in that game is meaningless to get NV back into the lead.

NV needs to improve performance in all of these first:
- Anno 2070
- Bulletstorm
- Serious Sam 3
- Batman AC + 8xMSAA
- Skyrim + Mods + 8xMSAA
- Arma II Operations / Day-Z mod
- Sniper Elite V2
- Dirt Showdown
- Sleeping Dogs
- Metro 2033
- Crysis 1 / Warhead
- Alan Wake
- Risen 2

That's a long list where 680 is slower. Until NV addresses those games or some newer games that take advantage of Kepler architecture come out (BL2, Medal of Honor), NV won't reclaim the single-GPU performance crown.

 

[96Firebird]

Sweet list of games where the GTX 680 is slower, although I'm not sure the purpose of that list in this thread... I'm sure a lot of Nvidia users are happy to know new drivers are coming soon, no matter if it beats the competition.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Considering GW2 can be maxed out on a $230 HD7870, gaining more performance in that game is meaningless to get NV back into the lead.

in what way does an average frame rate below 60 qualify as maxing out?

with my 120Hz monitor I want my minimum frame rate above 60

 

[tviceman]

Considering GW2 can be maxed out on a $230 HD7870, gaining more performance in that game is meaningless to get NV back into the lead.

NV needs to improve performance in all of these first:
- Anno 2070
- Bulletstorm
- Serious Sam 3
- Batman AC + 8xMSAA
- Skyrim + Mods + 8xMSAA
- Arma II Operations / Day-Z mod
- Sniper Elite V2
- Dirt Showdown
- Sleeping Dogs
- Metro 2033
- Crysis 1 / Warhead
- Alan Wake
- Risen 2

That's a long list where 680 is slower. Until NV addresses those games or some newer games that take advantage of Kepler architecture come out (BL2, Medal of Honor), NV won't reclaim the single-GPU performance crown.

The gtx680 quite simply won't regain the crown. It's held back by it's memory bandwidth. In games where performance is absolutely terrible there are strides to be made, but other than I do not anticipate anything more than 2-3% across the board going forward. GK104 has the potential to be Nvidia's next G92 if they can get faster ddr4 ram on their, or move to a different (and faster ram type) altogether. But if they can't, then it'll end up forever remaining as a chip with a huge amount of untapped potential.

 

[hokies83]

The Drivers are to Improve performance of Newer games i donno about older ones...

 

[tviceman]

The Drivers are to Improve performance of Newer games i donno about older ones...

I understand this. Drivers can fix game stopping performance issues and improve efficiency, but drivers will do nothing for being memory bandwidth constrained.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I understand this. Drivers can fix game stopping performance issues and improve efficiency, but drivers will do nothing for being memory bandwidth constrained.

I don't think anyone who uses a single monitor is memory bandwidth constrained just yet.

 

[hokies83]

I understand this. Drivers can fix game stopping performance issues and improve efficiency, but drivers will do nothing for being memory bandwidth constrained.

Yah im far far away from any of that....

 

[spinejam]

nice! 'bout time.

 

[RussianSensation]

in what way does an average frame rate below 60 qualify as maxing out?

with my 120Hz monitor I want my minimum frame rate above 60

It's a slow paced MMO, please explain why it's absolutely necessary to have 60 fps minimum in an MMO and why 49-50 fps is insufficient? GTX670/7970 are already getting 70 fps in this game. That's a joke for modern graphics cards on a single 1080P screen. Tom's already showed that the game is mostly CPU limited with a $400 GPU+ until you get into 1600P resolution. When 1 GPU gets 72 fps and another 76 fps, it's mostly meaningless. OTOH, when one GPU gets you 31 fps min and 47 fps average and the other gets you 37 fps min and 57 fps average, that's a huge difference. GW2 is not one of those games that requires a $500 GPU upgrade. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Metro 2033 or BF3 though actually do need a fast GPU.

GW2 loves a fast CPU:

With your CPU @ 4.7ghz you'll get 60 fps minimums on any of the 670/7970/680 cards ==> basically no difference in playability.

Yah im far far away from any of that....

Skyrim + ENB mods 8xMSAA or Batman AC + 8xMSAA and there is an evident memory bandwidth bottleneck on the 680. It's clear as mud on the 660Ti even. You don't play those games?

 

[SirPauly]

Sweet list of games where the GTX 680 is slower, although I'm not sure the purpose of that list in this thread... I'm sure a lot of Nvidia users are happy to know new drivers are coming soon, no matter if it beats the competition.

It's always nice to receive more performance but also nice to see some IQ enhancing goodies as well.

 

[hokies83]

It's a slow paced MMO, please explain why it's absolutely necessary to have 60 fps minimum in an MMO and why 49-50 fps is insufficient? GTX670/7970 are already getting 70 fps in this game. That's a joke for modern graphics cards on a single 1080P screen. Tom's already showed that the game is mostly CPU limited with a $400 GPU+ until you get into 1600P resolution. When 1 GPU gets 72 fps and another 76 fps, it's mostly meaningless. OTOH, when one GPU gets you 31 fps min and 47 fps average and the other gets you 37 fps min and 57 fps average, that's a huge difference. GW2 is not one of those games that requires a $500 GPU upgrade. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Metro 2033 or BF3 though actually do need a fast GPU.

GW2 loves a fast CPU:

With your CPU @ 4.7ghz you'll get 60 fps minimums on any of the 670/7970/680 cards ==> basically no difference in playability.




Skyrim + ENB mods 8xMSAA or Batman AC + 8xMSAA and there is an evident memory bandwidth bottleneck on the 680. It's clear as mud on the 660Ti even. You don't play those games?

I Play all those games maxxed out at 1440p and have 0 issues... again i do not care about someone elses bench marks i only care about my own systems performance.. and i crush those games...
I can also tell you BF3 Maxxed out uses more Vram

Only game i do not crush is Dirt Showdown.

 

[RussianSensation]

Ya, but that doesn't disprove the point tviceman made that Kepler is memory bandwidth limited. Why is it 680 > HD7970 at 1080P but at 1600P it's only as fast as a 925mhz 7970? It's not magic, it's memory bandwidth and its relationship to feeding ROPs that reveals a bottleneck in the 680. If the 680 didn't have a memory bandwidth problem, it would continue beating a stock 7970 even at 1600P, and yet it doesn't.

We also see how Kepler is very much dependent on that ROP/memory bandwidth relationship in demanding games when we compare a 670 to a 660Ti:

GTX780 will address this issue.

 

[blackened23]

On a side note, it is not at all unusual for MMOs to dip below 60 fps in heavily populated areas even on the most high end systems. Usually in cities and such - such areas are usually processor bound and the GPU doesn't help much in very densely populated areas. Even in WoW, I can dip to 30 fps at ultra settings, 1600p, in orgrimmar in front of the auction house when hundreds of players are around me. I played on the illidan realm which is probably the most populated realm in the US.

I really enjoy Guild Wars 2, although it does seem more like a conventional MMO than I would like. I feel like MMOs need to be shaken up - developers need to think out of the box! I'm sick of WoW clones. It has some good ideas, is very well polished, but it does stick to a lot of conventional ideas as well.

 

[cmdrdredd]

So Russian your list includes two benchmark only titles in Crysis and Metro, a game that runs at 60fps average and 30fps mins at 2560x1440 and you call it a problem in sleeping dogs, a bunch of games nobody plays, a couple popularish single player games that everyone has already finished in Batman and Skyrim. Finally dirt showdown cheats Nvidia cards from the word go due to their lighting which looks exactly the same as dirt 3.

Does that list matter? I'd say no.

 

[Gryz]

Enabling SSAO in GW2 does not seem to have a visible effect.
Too bad. I really like SSAO in Skryrim.

I do see my fps drop, but I don't see any extra shadows in places where I expect them. I've played with SSAO in Skyrim. I see a noticable difference in that game with SSAO on or off. So I expected to see the same thing in GW2. Nothing.

Do I need to disable FXAA or something ? I kinda remember that in Skyrim, the AA settings would impact whether SSAO would work or not. Anything similar in GW2 ?

GW2 does not max out easily. On my gtx680 + i5-3570k @1920x1200, driver 301.42, I had ~50 fps in many areas when playing today. I just installed 306.02. Framerates are higher. But still I dip below 60 in some places (not talking about cities). Maybe I should finally look into overclocking my CPU.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Enabling SSAO in GW2 does not seem to have a visible effect.
Too bad. I really like SSAO in Skryrim.

I do see my fps drop, but I don't see any extra shadows in places where I expect them. I've played with SSAO in Skyrim. I see a noticable difference in that game with SSAO on or off. So I expected to see the same thing in GW2. Nothing.

Do I need to disable FXAA or something ? I kinda remember that in Skyrim, the AA settings would impact whether SSAO would work or not. Anything similar in GW2 ?

GW2 does not max out easily. On my gtx680 + i5-3570k @1920x1200, driver 301.42, I had ~50 fps in many areas when playing today. I just installed 306.02. Framerates are higher. But still I dip below 60 in some places (not talking about cities). Maybe I should finally look into overclocking my CPU.

They say use 16x AF and at least 2x MSAA with Ambient Occlusion in the control panel.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

OTOH, when one GPU gets you 31 fps min and 47 fps average and the other gets you 37 fps min and 57 fps average, that's a huge difference.

Difference isn't enough to make it playable, those are both complete garbage frame rates. Under actual playable settings, the performance numbers between AMD and nVidia are virtually identical.

GW2 is not one of those games that requires a $500 GPU upgrade. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Metro 2033 or BF3 though actually do need a fast GPU.

Nope, not really chomping at the bit to spend $500 for games I'll spend maybe 10 hours playing and am then done with them for good.

And yeah, BF3 is a game where A. the single player is far less hardware intensive, and B. going to turn the settings down regardless in order to to get proper frame rates for competitive advantage in multiplayer, as well actually improve the overall look by removing the garbage effects: http://files.technofovea.com/dice_rendering_screens.swf

 

[Gryz]

They say use 16x AF and at least 2x MSAA with Ambient Occlusion in the control panel.

Thanks.
I always use 16xAF. And I believe that in Skyrim (and Fallout 3) SSAO started working properly when I forced MSAA and transparency MSAA (in stead of transparency SSAA).

However, I thought GW2 only supported FXAA.
At least, that's the only option in the GW2 settings.
I thought MSAA can't be used in GW2 because of the type of rendering. And the nVidia control panel does not allow you to change the AA-mode (nor the FXAA setting).

Maybe Nvidia Inspector allows me to disable FXAA and enable MSAA. But it's weird that nVidia releases a driver with SSAO support, but you can't get it to work with the settings in the game, nor in nVidia's control panel.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Considering GW2 can be maxed out on a $230 HD7870, gaining more performance in that game is meaningless to get NV back into the lead.

Toms numbers are pretty wrong tho. I can vouch for that. Unless they didnt enable FXAA. Or they went to some place without any action.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Thanks.
I always use 16xAF. And I believe that in Skyrim (and Fallout 3) SSAO started working properly when I forced MSAA and transparency MSAA (in stead of transparency SSAA).

However, I thought GW2 only supported FXAA.
At least, that's the only option in the GW2 settings.
I thought MSAA can't be used in GW2 because of the type of rendering. And the nVidia control panel does not allow you to change the AA-mode (nor the FXAA setting).

Maybe Nvidia Inspector allows me to disable FXAA and enable MSAA. But it's weird that nVidia releases a driver with SSAO support, but you can't get it to work with the settings in the game, nor in nVidia's control panel.

I dunno, I dont have gw2. Just know what the release nptes mentioned.

 

[Gryz]

I got SSAO working. I see a noticable shadow under some plants. But not under all plants. And I hardly see any effect on surfaces. A bit underwhelming. SSAO has a larger impact on Skyrim, I think. The performance hit is noticable (20 fps less on Quality setting, 10 fps less on Performance setting, 50-60 fps without SSAO to start with).

It seemed to start working after I changed the "Render Sampling" setting a few times. No idea what this exactly means. But setting it to Super Sampling kills my framerate (almost 50% penalty it seemed). And setting it to Sub Sampling gave a terrible blurry image. Keeping it on Native for the moment, with Performance SSAO.