NVIDIA Releases GeForce 257.21 WHQL Driver Suite

[trt740]

Well I suppose him coming to the conclusion that a 470 will PWN even an overclocked 5870 based on two synthetic benchmarks and crappy hawx is just a wee bit biased lol.







Even the site owner called it a bad review, it's one of the worst I and many others have read.

and really lets leave that to their forum. He didn't use these drivers so lets wait for one that does and you can discuss that review on that forum. The only reason I posted it is because it was the newest review in our review section. So lets move on

 

[crow1001]

Yeah sorry if you are offended by my ever so abusive name calling I'm glad we agree I'm right regarding our little disagreement.

 

[MuhammedAbdo]

http://www.behardware.com/articles/792-2/geforce-gtx-480-and-release-256-performances.html

 

[Eva01Master]

It's both laughable and regrettable how many enthusiasts bash at reviewers just because they doesn't share their particular viewpoint. I believe enthusiasts should not behave like regular users and that includes attitudes like bashing and fanboyism, (I'm not sure if that's a proper word, but gets the idea across so I'll use it) you disregard the opinions in the review, express it consistently by presenting facts, not bashing nor trashing the reviewer and his opinion.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

but BC2 with oc'ed processor seems to work now, been playing it for 2 hours

Nothings wrong with the driver, its your OC thats probably messed up. I had the same issue before. Try running 20 iterations of intel aburn test maximum to see if its stable.

 

[LiveOrDie]

http://www.behardware.com/articles/792-2/geforce-gtx-480-and-release-256-performances.html
http://www.behardware.com/medias/photos_news/00/28/IMG0028899.jpg
http://www.behardware.com/medias/photos_news/00/28/IMG0028900.jpg
http://www.behardware.com/medias/photos_news/00/28/IMG0028901.jpg

wrong driver

 

[Tatty_Two]

As I understand it, across the board,in all resolutions the HD5870 is some 9% faster than the GTX470 as at April 2010.........

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_470/30.html

Now that is with fairly mature drivers for the HD 5870 and pretty new drivers for the GTX 470, so what we should be asking ourselves is simple really....... over a driver development period of say 6 months, can at least a 9% performance improvement be found through drivers alone, the answer to that is yes, we see it most of the time and on those odd rare occasions 15% plus (ATi's 2900XT back in 2007, NVidia's G92 8800GTS hit about 13% I think).

All thats left to determine is though, will ATi get significantly more performance from their drivers over the next couple of releases, if they do, the 470 may still lag behind a little, if they don't.... it may be close.

 

[crow1001]

I prefer to look at performance on an individual game basis, not a performance chart that has games benched such as quake 4, prey and some other very redundant titles, in the majority of games the 5870 easily beats the 470, my link again below.

http://www.techspot.com/review/283-geforce-gtx-400-vs-radeon-hd-5800/

Regarding drivers, as you can see by Nvidia's latest release there is no real performance increase noticeable to fermi owners, benches around the web show basically no difference, Nvidia's performance figures have always been dodgy, when they say up to 25% increase in a game it could mean at one certain point not an overall increase. Nividia drivers for fermi are already very mature, what do you think they were doing the 7 months fermi was delayed??

 

[Mussels]

As I understand it, across the board,in all resolutions the HD5870 is some 9% faster than the GTX470 as at April 2010.........

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_470/30.html

Now that is with fairly mature drivers for the HD 5870 and pretty new drivers for the GTX 470, so what we should be asking ourselves is simple really....... over a driver development period of say 6 months, can at least a 9% performance improvement be found through drivers alone, the answer to that is yes, we see it most of the time and on those odd rare occasions 15% plus (ATi's 2900XT back in 2007, NVidia's G92 8800GTS hit about 13% I think).

All thats left to determine is though, will ATi get significantly more performance from their drivers over the next couple of releases, if they do, the 470 may still lag behind a little, if they don't.... it may be close.

its more likely to be a 2% boost, than a 9% boost. driver enhancements tend to fix compatiblity issues more than performance.... the drivers that really boost performance are few and far between.

 

[Bundy]

looks to me like a bunch of people unfairly went after a guy for doing a review, because they didn't like it , however, back on topic these drivers appear to gain performance at higher resolutions. and not at 1680x1050 as hero shows. Why do I have to be a fanboy if I don't agree??? and one forum is hardly all over the net.

fanboi you are not. I,d rather read a post from someone who sees potential than one that is critical coz they think it,s cool.

 

[MuhammedAbdo]

Techspot used a very inaccurate method which is a 30-sec fraps run , now I have no problem with fraps as a benchmark tool .. but really a 30 second run ? that accomplishes what exactly? , not to mention that the reviewer did some mistakes regarding Just Cause 2 , he tested it with Bohek Filter and GPU Waters enabled on Geforce cards , and of course they were disabled on Radeons , that shows that he has a limited experience on the benchmarking field , or that he doesn't double-check settings or results .

Here is a more mature review from hardwarecanuks showing GTX470 completely annihilating HD5850 thanks to the new driver :

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...g-methods-investigated-fact-vs-fiction-3.html

wrong driver

Why wrong ? that is the beta driver of the same version ..

 

[Mussels]

Why wrong ? that is the beta driver of the same version ..

same number means nothing, the internals often change between WHQL and betas, even with the same build number.

 

[Tatty_Two]

its more likely to be a 2% boost, than a 9% boost. driver enhancements tend to fix compatiblity issues more than performance.... the drivers that really boost performance are few and far between.

I would expect to see at least that (2%) between the first and second driver release for much new hardware, in fact I think we did for the 5850 & 5870, I seem to recall a few reveiw sites re-running benches because of the driver > performance ratio improvement..... I may have got that wrong though so I will do a bit of research. I could have added a lot more than just the 2900XT or the 8800GTS in my earlier post, like the HD3870 and the HD3850 but that was not hard, seeing as ATi actually released the HD3870 without a proper driver set at the time.

 

[francis511]

Just to confirm , these do NOT have the physx "feature" from the betas then ?

 

[crow1001]

Hardwarecanucks been in Nvidia's back pocket for a long time now, I'll stick with the neutral sites.

 

[W1zzard]

same number means nothing, the internals often change between WHQL and betas, even with the same build number.

shouldnt .. when done properly every single change to the code changes the build number

 

[erixx]

It's both laughable and regrettable how many enthusiasts bash at reviewers just because they doesn't share their particular viewpoint. I believe enthusiasts should not behave like regular users and that includes attitudes like bashing and fanboyism, (I'm not sure if that's a proper word, but gets the idea across so I'll use it) you disregard the opinions in the review, express it consistently by presenting facts, not bashing nor trashing the reviewer and his opinion.

ABSOLUTLY!!!!! A real 'enthusiast' should not even know 'brands', etc.... just look for facts.

Fuck the fanboys everywhere and in every way possible!!!!!! haha

 

[Mussels]

shouldnt .. when done properly every single change to the code changes the build number

well, remember the beta that allowed ATI + physX? they replaced it with a modified file with the same version number. its happened before (Differences in WHQL vs beta with same name) so it could happen again.

 

[Helper]

Just to confirm , these do NOT have the physx "feature" from the betas then ?

They released a driver that only put back restriction right after betas and they have also changed the betas. It's gone.

 

[W1zzard]

well, remember the beta that allowed ATI + physX? they replaced it with a modified file with the same version number. its happened before (Differences in WHQL vs beta with same name) so it could happen again.

nothing has been replaced (i assume you are talking about 257.15 beta). just checked by downloading from nvidia and comparing to the file at tpu downloads

# wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/257.15/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
2010-06-16 08:54:45 (558 KB/s) - `257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe' saved [86749616/86749616]
# md5sum /tmp/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
4dbf5b17a552059b63ab488d47d4e47a  /tmp/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe

# md5sum 257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
4dbf5b17a552059b63ab488d47d4e47a  257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe

 

[Mussels]

nothing has been replaced (i assume you are talking about 257.15 beta). just checked by downloading from nvidia and comparing to the file at tpu downloads

# wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/257.15/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
2010-06-16 08:54:45 (558 KB/s) - `257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe' saved [86749616/86749616]
# md5sum /tmp/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
4dbf5b17a552059b63ab488d47d4e47a  /tmp/257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe

# md5sum 257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
4dbf5b17a552059b63ab488d47d4e47a  257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe

then why did people report hte file being updated/changed, and the ATI physX no longer working? You sure the TPU one has the working PhysX?

 

[W1zzard]

then why did people report hte file being updated/changed, and the ATI physX no longer working? You sure the TPU one has the working PhysX?

i downloaded it on the sunday that the bug was discovered. link me to a version that you think is unfixed please.

if nvidia actually fixed the bug without changing anything else it would be the best thing to happen

 

[MuhammedAbdo]

Hardwarecanucks been in Nvidia's back pocket for a long time now, I'll stick with the neutral sites.

Whatever , it is your loss mate ..
And even if that is true , their latest review is topnotch , in fact it is one of the best ever.

 

[LiveOrDie]

Why wrong ? that is the beta driver of the same version ..

thats not the beta version of this driver thats the 257.15 beta not the 257.21 beta they change and fix problems making that review a waste of time.

 

[Mussels]

i downloaded it on the sunday that the bug was discovered. link me to a version that you think is unfixed please.

if nvidia actually fixed the bug without changing anything else it would be the best thing to happen

couldnt tell you sorry, i'm stuck with one PCI-E slot for now