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why does anyone visit toms?

neologan

neologan

neologan

Associate
Joined
26 Mar 2003
Posts
1,237
Location
Hertfordshire
i don't frequent there, but i get there newsletter from time to time and if any article title catches my eye i'll pop over to read it, and i always regret it. Todays newsletter had this article in there which caught my eye:

Do New Drivers Really Boost Performance?
How much extra performance can you get from a simple graphics driver update?

Now lets see what they claim in the first few paragraphs:

If you believe the most emphatic gamers, a graphics drivers update is good for—what, 10 or 15 percent additional performance? As a result, running benchmarks on Catalyst 8.6 when 8.8 is out automatically invalidates those other numbers and clearly indicates bias. All kidding aside, how much truth is there behind the assumption that every new driver update delivers untold performance enhancements?

AMD brings out a new Catalyst driver every month and if there’s a sales push for a new graphics chip between releases, additional beta drivers are released to the press. At Nvidia, the cycle between the official WHQL driver versions is longer. However, beta drivers containing minor changes are available at irregular intervals.

Logically, it’s clear some of the [driver] performance claims must be exaggerated. AMD and Nvidia release numerous driver builds every year. If each of these drivers were to increase 3D speed by 10 percent, the graphics cards would double their performance in a few months. But that’s not the case, as even new graphics chips are struggling to outshine their predecessors by up to 50 percent. If the claim that every graphics driver brings more speed were true, no one would ever buy new 3D hardware again because the driver updates would deliver greater benefits.
Click to expand...

ok, what?????? Stopped reading after this. Everytime i visit Toms, i come away wondering what they're smoking. In this case they've made up that AMD and NVIDIA claim each driver gives a 10% performance boost in everything, but toms is here to debunk this myth.........a myth they've just created in the same article?
 
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A misguided sense of loyalty? Back in the mid to late 90's THG was a really good site, with worthwhile features and reviews. I even topped their OC'ing charts with my volcanicly hot K6-2 for a while.
 
lol, firstly THG was never, ever, ever a good and resonable site, not ever. He used to get payed an absolute shedload(probably still does) but a certain few companies and especially back in the late 90's he was massively influenced and biased about Intel things with some truly unbelievable reviews comparing the chips.

But in that review he says not that AMD or Nvidia claim 10% performance but that some "emphatic gamers" insist that drivers give them massive boosts and is a fairly big reason you see a "new beta driver XXX.XXX.XXXXXX" thread every couple of weeks with dozens of people jumping in talking about how fantastic it is and what the performance increases are and installing beta drivers hoping for more performance.

In reality sure, some games get large boosts because they were not optimised beforehand but the amount of times people on forums claim a new driver is like 10-30% faster across the board after testing a single(and often brand new games) game is ridiculous.

he has a point there, lots of people claim new drivers are great and thousands of people clamber onboard the beta bandwagon then complain about new issues which personally, I find laughable.

Again he states some of these claims are exagerated and yes he says the name AMD and Nvida in THE NEXT SENTENCE. But using the laws of english language(and from what I remember he's German so maybe your's should be better) you can't just add sentences together to make up your own sentences. THe claims, he clearly said were from emphatic gamers(presumably on forums around the world), theres nothing wrong at all with the bit you quoted.

It would seem his article is based on telling people the need to download and install every new driver with every new bug is virtually non existant and maybe suggesting people with problems might do better doing the opposite, finding a stable driver, and sticking with it until 5 set's later when they actually come across a problem.
 
Logically, it’s clear some of the [driver] performance claims must be exaggerated. AMD and Nvidia release numerous driver builds every year. If each of these drivers were to increase 3D speed by 10 percent, the graphics cards would double their performance in a few months. But that’s not the case, as even new graphics chips are struggling to outshine their predecessors by up to 50 percent. If the claim that every graphics driver brings more speed were true, no one would ever buy new 3D hardware again because the driver updates would deliver greater benefits.
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Bit of an exaggeration, they (nv + amd) don't claim those gains on each release and it usually comes with the clause 'up to'. However I have to say with my x1900xtx, 8800gtx, fx5600 and the 4870x2's, I have seen very impressive gains over the lifespan of each product.
 
drunkenmaster, i assumed he stopped talking about what emphatic gamers believe at the end of papragraph one when he said:

All kidding aside, how much truth is there behind the assumption that every new driver update delivers untold performance enhancements?
Click to expand...

maybe i'm wrong, though.

Even so, i don't recall seeing claims of 10-15% performance increases across the board, ever, for any driver, even on guru3D.
 
drunkenmaster said:
lol, firstly THG was never, ever, ever a good and resonable site, not ever. He used to get payed an absolute shedload(probably still does) but a certain few companies and especially back in the late 90's he was massively influenced and biased about Intel things with some truly unbelievable reviews comparing the chips.
Click to expand...

Nah.. Back in the real early days of the site the material was good.

We are talking 96 though.

Edit: The stuff you posted about Intel is a bit strange, especially as Intel got into a shedload of trouble over trying to bribe reviews and THG showing their 1Ghz+ P3 was a crock of ****.
 
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each time tom produces some weird benchmarking article, i always read the readers comments below and they are always damning of the entire article.
Tom obviously either a) doesn't read his readers comments, or b) truly doesn't give a **** about them, otherwise surely he'd take notice.
Nobody takes the site seriously anymore, its shockingly crap now.
 
[TW]Fox;12661830 said:
Not sure I see the problem with that quote?
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i got it a tad wrong, i thought after the first paragraph he was talking about how the industry was claiming these things, not just the gamers. It's because its written a bit funny imo, as are so many things at toms. Try reading that article about "why SSD's actually consume more power" on Toms - they just can't write stuff clearly on that site.

Besides, even if you do read the whole thing as being about gamers claims, well i've never seen anyone claim a driver gives 10-15% boosts in every game everytime one is released, have you? that's what he decidied to write...

So even though he throws the blame for the entire article on gamers testing drivers (really this is about guru3d forums) he has exaggerated by a huge amount, thus his intro page is still tripe imo. Or maybe he's trying to be funny but being german it just hasn't worked?

But hey, remove what i'm saying about this specific article and change it from a huge selection of garbage articles at Toms to get the same effect... :)
 
Drivers only boost performance of a new card for a few months or so, not indefinately lol.

Both Their claims are great, look at Nvidia's latest for example. :p

* Single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)
* Single GPU increases up to 11% in Assassin's Creed DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Bioshock DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Call of Duty 4
* Single GPU increases up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 7% in Bioshock DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 12% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in World in Conflict DX10

Dunno how they are managing to boost the nigh on 2 year old 8800's still, jesus, the ***** must be as fast as the GT200's by now, if not faster. :D
 
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If you go from 169.xx to 175.xx you lose about 2% performace in most of those titles if you then go from 175.xx to later 177.xx or 178.xx you do gain around 10% performance in many titles even on the 8800GT. So overall you do gain around 5-8% and in some cases more than 10%.

As I can benchmark and prove that nVidia have recently released drivers that boost the 8800GT by a good few percent in many titles maybe I should roll out that old quote ;)
 
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