Soldato
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- 27 Feb 2012
- Posts
- 6,586
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**THE NVIDIA DRIVERS THREAD**
- Thread starter Boomstick777
- Start date
Soldato
As far as I'm aware, the driver you speak of from the other camp was a GCN optimisation that made it faster in everything across the board. Basically unleashed the cards true performance. This however is more of a tweak based on how dx12 and mantle work. The gains are not across the entire board and some titles have massively different levels of optimisation than others. Looks at the difference between rome 2 and metro last light for example. Enormous gains in the first game, with very small gains in the second.
From my point of view, any gain in FPS, especially minimum, when coupled with no loss in IQ, is very welcome.
Paul summed it up nicely
Yup
Normally with a driver that gives extra performance you see optimisations at either the A or B side of the driver code A being the functions that are called by the rendering API when it interfaces with the driver directly or indirectly and B being the way the driver software manages the hardware.
Game->Rendering API->(A)GPU Driver(B)->Hardware
With these drivers some of the gains come from over-riding the functions in the rendering API that contain code within them that talks to the drivers and the improvement comes from X.
Game->Rendering API(X)->GPU Driver->Hardware
I suspect that some of the gains come purely from taking the functions at X that will have generic code designed to work without knowing exactly what the hardware beneath is doing and/or having lots of different ways of operating depending on what GPU is detected and using carnal knowledge of the nVidia hardware to purely provide support for nVidia drivers/GPU and cutting out anything else.
In the case of the GCN performance drivers I suspect the optimisations would have come from the B point above.
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Soldato
Thanks guys the 12.11 is the one. It's great to see gains from either side as we the consumer benefit.
As a CPU limited gamer (Phenom II 6 core @4) I am loving these drivers in BF4. I am also now downloading the new Win 8.1 update and hoping that these drivers in conjunction with an updated Win 8.1 work even better. I really doubt there will be any increase from the Win update but can't hurt to hope
As a CPU limited gamer (Phenom II 6 core @4) I am loving these drivers in BF4. I am also now downloading the new Win 8.1 update and hoping that these drivers in conjunction with an updated Win 8.1 work even better. I really doubt there will be any increase from the Win update but can't hurt to hope
Hoping they are but a taste of whats to come for BF4 performance heh - though I can't see them ever unlocking as much performance as Mantle potentially can but they do seem to do a nice job under certain demanding circumstances of pushing up the minimums.
Caporegime
Yes Joe i remember the driver you're referring to. I actually tested it here and posted a thread. I received a 17.5% performance boost, it was nice.
I'm not sure that this performance boost from 12.11 beta was due to lower cpu overheard though, i think it was more the fact that AMD got to work a bit closer with Dice and provide better driver optimizations. I speculate it was around that time AMD/Dice/EA got together and formed a partnership.
EDIT
I've been trying to find the thread i posted with the results, but i can't seem to find it. Will keep digging.
Soldato
Just to be clear I to realise that performance increases came from different places with Nvidia / AMD. They are both "wonder drivers" in their own way.
For the record 12.11 gave great gains but it was a buggy mess, many stayed on 12.10 whql until 13.1 came out, which was a pretty sweet driver. 12.11 was the start which is why its often earmarked as the game changing driver it was, though stability came later (3 months later) in 13.1.
Don
Please keep this thread on topic. I don't like suspending people or deleting tons of posts. It messes with my chi.
Caporegime
Back on topic. the guys who have installed these, have you noticed games feel smoother or improvements to frames?
I am so impressed with these and even with 4K gaming and no noticeable gains, they just seem to feel smooth, even at the lower end of the fps.
I am so impressed with these and even with 4K gaming and no noticeable gains, they just seem to feel smooth, even at the lower end of the fps.
Caporegime
So far ive only tried bf4, min fps is up a bit and in general it feels smoother. However im still getting big cpu spikes, but i think my connection is causing this as it has been shocking the last two days.
Caporegime
Yer could be down to the internet connection or even server side. The last time I had a few proper rounds, 3 of the 4 servers were rubber banding big time and I am sure that would translate to those spikes as well.
All I've had is a little nip around on BF4, I would say it feels smoother, but I can't honestly hold my hand up and say I'd notice if I didn't have half of my screen covered in OSD and rendering information.
In truth I need higher res to really feel most of the benefit, 2 x 780's really do rip through absolutely anything at 1080.
In truth I need higher res to really feel most of the benefit, 2 x 780's really do rip through absolutely anything at 1080.
Caporegime
Today’s 337.50 Beta drivers introduce the first of these optimizations, boosting performance in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Far Cry 3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, Sniper Elite V2, Star Swarm, Thief, Titanfall, Tomb Raider, and Total War: Rome 2, to name but a few examples.
Compared to our competitor’s new, much-discussed API, our testing found the combination of the new 337.50 Beta drivers, and DirectX 11, to offer a faster experience with suitably-matched hardware, as found in enthusiast systems:
GeForce GTX 780 Ti 1920x1080 337.50 Beta DirectX 11 Game Performance
Unlike our competitor’s API solution, the DirectX 11 enhancements in 337.50 Beta benefit all GeForce GTX DirectX 11 GPUs, not just the latest and greatest graphics cards.
Results will vary depending on your CPU, GPU, Operating System, and system configuration, but you should experience some degree of enhancement in almost all DirectX 11 games. For a detailed look at NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700 Series performance optimizations, check out our final section of our article for an overabundance of benchmark charts.
SLI Performance Optimizations & Profile Updates
Upgrade your rig with a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU to activate SLI, the multi-GPU technology of choice for gamers. With intelligent scaling and industry-leading multi-GPU anti-stutter technology, NVIDIA SLI is the smoothest, most effective way of increasing frame rates by up to 2x.
In 337.50 Beta we’ve dramatically reduced multi-GPU CPU overhead, resulting in considerable performance gains in CPU-bound games, and additional performance gains in the majority of SLI-enabled titles, as the chart below illustrates:
Caporegime
Dropped settings down to the very lowest, ran like greased lightning but still spiking. To max it im gonna start saving in earnest for another 780.
Caporegime
Good shout and you know it makes sense. If only we cold stay out the pub, we would get these things much sooner
Permabanned
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- 15 Sep 2010
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- 2,691
To be honest Greg, I tried BF4 with these new drivers on my favourite map Flood zone with vsync on, 64 player and it was locked on 120fps, where as before it would drop below this. Silky smooth and very happy. Thanks Nvidia
Edit:
Game totally maxed out, 2xGTX780 @1920X1080
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Caporegime
To be honest Greg, I tried BF4 with these new drivers on my favourite map Flood zone with vsync on, 64 player and it was locked on 120fps, where as before it would drop below this. Silky smooth and very happy. Thanks Nvidia
Ahhh nice bud and fantastic. I like floodzone as well but I get owned on it
Sleeping Dogs definitely feels smoother and I note that my GPU utilisation is up over the previous drivers (less dips overall).
This appears to be the case with Crysis 3 as well.
Absolute max settings don't appear much different but then I am GPU limited in most benches.
In terms of overall stability I havn't noticed much change (a good thing as I didn't have issues with the previous divers), apart from the fact my 780M has finally stopped ramping up its clocks randomly when MSI Afterburner is running.