NVIDIA Releases GeForce 337.50 Performance-Focused Graphis Driver

[mastrdrver]

Maybe see if someone around here with an AMD CPU paired with a 600/700 series GPU would run a few benchmarks for us all. See if these drivers really do benefit CPU limited situations.

I'd still like to see something like the minimum required cpu for BF4 paired with a 290/290x to see what kind of improvements Mantle really offers.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

How can people be so huffy about free performance boosts?

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

gonna do a clean install for this driver & check whether the improvements on all DX11 ready cards are true. If so, then it's a keeper, if not then I'll just use it like any other drivers to keep things running normally.

 

[Naito]

How can people be so huffy about free performance boosts?

No idea. It may not offer much more gains in performance over the regular driver release, and the marketing may be misleading (what, in the history of marketing, isn't?), but as you said, it is a FREE boost. Extra few frames here and there is a good thing, but something not really shown is that it might improve the consistency the frames are delivered; less skips, jumps, etc.

It seems the ones being the most opposed to this are owners of AMD GPUs (at least in this thread). Those of who have no need to worry about this driver, unless they somehow irrationally think this affects Mantle? They say the strongest forms of fanboy-ism comes from people trying to rationalize their decision to buy expensive items. God forbid Nvidia releases something that allows the 'other side' (from fanboys point of view) to benefit from a performance boost.

 

[john_]

How can people be so huffy about free performance boosts?

They are not huffy about free performance. They are happy about free performance as always. But all this marketing campaign was pointing to a "WONDER" driver, a"MANTLE KILLER", a driver that transforms DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 (in a way). They are huffy at the marketing campaign that came before the driver, not the driver itself. The driver is just fine.

 

[sweet]

Meanwhile

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/amd-announces-radeon-r9-295x2-twice-as-fast-as-r9-290x

Insane beast!!

 

[xenocide]

They are not huffy about free performance. They are happy about free performance as always. But all this marketing campaign was pointing to a "WONDER" driver, a"MANTLE KILLER", a driver that transforms DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 (in a way). They are huffy at the marketing campaign that came before the driver, not the driver itself. The driver is just fine.

I wouldn't consider Nvidia having a rep offhandedly mention it at a convention a "marketing campaign".

 

[TheDeeGee]

I went back to 327.23 because these drivers are still plagued with the Black Screen during Windows Login.

If they don't solve this soon my next upgrade will be AMD.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I went back to 327.23 because these drivers are still plagued with the Black Screen during Windows Login.

If they don't solve this soon my next upgrade will be AMD.

That sounds like an issue of your system, ive never seen that or heard of the issue.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

Anyone else having issues with overclocking with this driver?

I updated from the 331.65 drivers to these new ones and my overclock is now unstable and crashing games.

Did nVidia do something to nerf overclocking?

It would be pretty low if it was true.

 

[FX-GMC]

I went back to 327.23 because these drivers are still plagued with the Black Screen during Windows Login.

If they don't solve this soon my next upgrade will be AMD.

No they aren't. You system is plagued with the Black Screen during Windows Login. I've never heard of or seen this issue and I usually read the driver release threads at forums.geforce.com

 

[TheDeeGee]

That sounds like an issue of your system, ive never seen that or heard of the issue.

No they aren't. You system is plagued with the Black Screen during Windows Login. I've never heard of or seen this issue and I usually read the driver release threads at forums.geforce.com

The Forum there has an official sticky created by ManuelG.

NVIDIA knows about the problem, but has problems reproducing it.

And there is more people with the same issue. Some have to use even older drivers.

 

[FX-GMC]

The Forum there has an official sticky created by ManuelG.

NVIDIA knows about the problem, but has problems reproducing it.

And there is more people with the same issue. Some have to use even older drivers.

Guess I missed that. Used three different nVidia cards in the past year and a half and never had that issue.

To be fair tho, most people in that thread seem to be talking about entirely different issues.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

Testing it at 2560x1440 is kind

No idea. It may not offer much more gains in performance over the regular driver release, and the marketing may be misleading (what, in the history of marketing, isn't?), but as you said, it is a FREE boost. Extra few frames here and there is a good thing, but something not really shown is that it might improve the consistency the frames are delivered; less skips, jumps, etc.

It seems the ones being the most opposed to this are owners of AMD GPUs (at least in this thread). Those of who have no need to worry about this driver, unless they somehow irrationally think this affects Mantle? They say the strongest forms of fanboy-ism comes from people trying to rationalize their decision to buy expensive items. God forbid Nvidia releases something that allows the 'other side' (from fanboys point of view) to benefit from a performance boost.

Yeah it's kind of sad how some people are upset that nvidia is giving away free performance boost(especially in mantle-enabled titles) without making game devs do any extra work.

 

[mastrdrver]

I wouldn't consider Nvidia having a rep offhandedly mention it at a convention a "marketing campaign".

It's not a offhanded mention when they compare their wonder driver to Mantle in just about every slide, yet use the fast CPU to compare. Hardly a worthy comparison since Mantle shows massive improvements with slower, old CPUs. I'd like to see how well the wonder driver looks when shackled with the minimum required CPU for BF4.

 

[arbiter]

You were expecting the marketing to show the conservative real world gains? When was the last time that happened? Check this snapshot from 16 years ago. Same as it ever was.
BTW, I haven't seen many site test reviews set out incorporating DX11 v Mantle v FW335 v FW337 as per the slide, but ComputerBase gave it a shot as well as a Win 7 vs Win 8.1 comparison

On that 1080p thief %, i have EVGA GTX780 ACX, i haven't overclocked it over what came from factory, using mine using very high settings avged 69fps on theif, According to AMD's press slides a 290x using mantle avg'ed 73fps.

 

[TheHunter]

I got boosts in a lot of games, although I had to test with a little lower reso. by some to see that cpu bottleneck.




Batman AC

Physx - high; rest highest dx11, with fxaa - high @ 1080p

some 331.xx driver

min 43fps
max 113fps
avg 81fps


now 337.50

min 50fps
max 122fps
avg 86fps


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitman Absolution

tested lower reso 720p, level detail - ultra, no aa..


335.23
min 60-62fps (be it 4.5 or 4.7ghz)


337.50
min 82fps



a whooping 18-20fps boost by min fps

---------------------------------------------------------------------


JustCasue2

Desert Sunrise

335.23


337.50


Gained ~ 5-6fps on avg.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


HardReset

ingame max, fxaa @ 1080p

335.23
min: 76-77fps (best of the best so far)

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/u2nuauG.jpg)

337.50
min: 80.5fps

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/fKcPSFP.jpg)

But then again, I never see this min fps.
min fps usually happened by that first big car explosion, now I saw ~ 92fps there and gpu usage to the max.. Idk what was with 335.23 though, but i remember some earlier drivers had ~ 80-90% gpu usage and min fps ~75fps..

----------------------------------------------------------------------

LostPlanet Colonies, 720p, dx10 rest highest, no aa. Tested for cpu bottleneck

335.23 or was it 331.87
min fps: 181fps

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/EE9YjsP)


337.50
min fps: 197fps

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/DDv4gEu)


cpu bottleneck:

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/0iUaQLs)

now min min 143fps, before with older ~132fps

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Batman AO, physx - high, 1080p, fxaa, dof - normal

335.23
min fps: 53

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/7jhsCMn.jpg)

337.50
min fps: 56

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/eGlQ45L.jpg)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monster Hunter 1

335.23

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/Ah5D8F6.jpg)

337.50

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/pC61523.jpg)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------


3dmark06

Old score with 570gtx @930mhz, cpu @ 4.7ghz,

Driver 331.40
34480


http://i.imgur.com/MVwnGjD.png



Now 580gtx @ 900mhz, cpu @ 4.6ghz.

38702



and this cpu bound location, now min ~64fps, before ~58fps + before I also had a little higher cpu OC


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

RAGE - cuda transcode

335.23
385

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/T8VxdOq.jpg)

337.50
394 (after 4th try), 2 times it was ~ 380-386

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/kTgTxGo.jpg)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sleeping Dogs, all max, fxaa;
(boost 1-2 fps by avg), was gpu bottlenecked all the time,

335.23

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/Zd1BHly.jpg)

337.50

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/LjRYcDw.jpg)


335.23 already fixed those cpu bottleneck for me..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

StarSwarm - extreme follow @ 1080p

335.23
Average FPS: 37.46

337.50
Average FPS: 39.94
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The only game that had no affect, sadly -_- was RedFaction Armageddon (dx11), same fps drops by explosions and X3TC bench - not a single fps increase gpu usage ~30-40%.




Overall quite impressed.

 

[THE_EGG]

I got boosts in a lot of games, although I had to test with a little lower reso. by some to see that cpu bottleneck.

Overall quite impressed.

I should have hung on to my 580 :*( They are some impressive gains!

 

[Fluffmeister]

Nice results TheHunter, drivers have been great for me too.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Guess I missed that. Used three different nVidia cards in the past year and a half and never had that issue.

To be fair tho, most people in that thread seem to be talking about entirely different issues.

There is a handful with the same problem tho. And google shows even more results.

No clue what's causing it. Even a clean windows install with latest drivers causing it.

Strangely enough the newer Drivers are rock solid in Games and never crash. It's just that sometimes the screen hangs during the Windows Welcome screen. It happens when the Drivers are being loaded and the GPU has to be detected. For some reason with Drivers after 327.23 this has a chance to fail.

Doesn't seem to be GPU related either, some people with 780s have it aswell.

I never ever had issues with NVIDIA either. This is the first time.

The only other thing i havn't tried is Windows 8.x.

 

[FX-GMC]

There is a handful with the same problem tho. And google shows even more results.

No clue what's causing it. Even a clean windows install with latest drivers causing it.

Strangely enough the newer Drivers are rock solid in Games and never crash. It's just that sometimes the screen hangs during the Windows Welcome screen. It happens when the Drivers are being loaded and the GPU has to be detected. For some reason with Drivers after 327.23 this has a chance to fail.

Doesn't seem to be GPU related either, some people with 780s have it aswell.

I never ever had issues with NVIDIA either. This is the first time.

The only other thing i havn't tried is Windows 8.x.

I can't recall if any of the posts I read mentioned Windows 8. May be worth doing a trial. That would give nVidia something else to look at if it does solve the issue.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

never have problems on my end since the release of R331 Game Ready Drivers... system stability so far is nominal & hearing folks getting a black screen on login is a very rare case.

 

[TheDeeGee]

I can't recall if any of the posts I read mentioned Windows 8. May be worth doing a trial. That would give nVidia something else to look at if it does solve the issue.

Fixed the Black Screen during Windows Logon. It had nothing to do with my Hardware Setup.

Installing http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2923766 did the trick.

Using 337.61 for a couple of days now and havn't ran into the Black Screen anymore.

 

[FX-GMC]

Fixed the Black Screen during Windows Logon. It had nothing to do with my Hardware Setup.

Installing http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2923766 did the trick.

Using 337.61 for a couple of days now and havn't ran into the Black Screen anymore.

Thanks for the update.