Which driver? gts250

Gah, i hope this doesn't get double posted... the silly "ask the community" from the home page never works for me...

Long story short...

I have a 9600gt, and will be getting a 250gts today. I am currently running 185.xx drivers, but i know new ones have been released. I never updated the drivers because, frankly, the current ones worked just fine.

My question is as follows...

For a gts250 (which i know is a rebranded 9800++) should i...

-use the same 185.xx driver

-use the new 186.18

-use some other like a 92.xx?

I use the computer really just for gaming, and the games are either WoW or the latest FPS. Any input on the drivers would be great!

Current ones will work fine, but for best performance always use the newest drivers.

I've been using the 190.62's on Vista and XP and they've been fine. The 182.50 drivers are not the best drivers for Vista and XP in my experience.

XP acting up? never seen that happen, but if you say so.....

Have you tried a clean OS install?

The Win 7 RTM is everywhere on the net, you should get it if you decide going 7. A fresh install of XP is of course a good choice too, just you won't have DX10.

Both options are good. I usually reinstall XP every 8~10 months when it starts to behave awkwardly, no need for viruses. It just gets slower and capricious, don't know why. However Win7 is a beauty, extremely stable, I felt XP ugly after that Artlike OS hehe

By the way, would you mind guys with a GTS250 doing some benchmarks with the games you have when you change drivers? I usually bench with Far Cry 2 and Trackmania Forever.. FC2 has only got fps drops since 182.50 for me in vista.. But I've heared that FC2 bench is bugged, don't remember where.. I just want to know what benefits does it bring to you since your machines have to be all diferent

jers, yeah i'm the same way, i like to do a clean install at least once a year, just deciding which way to go this year 8)

Unfortunately i don't have any newer games to really bench for you... no CoD, no Crysis, no Far Cry 2... only thing that i think is even installed on the machine with the 250gts is dungeon keeper 2 and WoW lol

Is your GPU OC'd at all, OvrClkr?

Here is mine, this is with XPSP3 and the older 186.16 (or was it 186.86..) drivers.

Big difference in the SM2 and 3 score (which is why i asked if the GPU is OC'd or not...) though, the difference could also partially come in because OvrClkr's CPU spanks the hell out of mine.

It has come to a funny change, now it is a bench thread
It's cool to see your results and OCs but I can't make much sense of them as it would be only seeing if your pc or mine is faster in this or that hahah

My original intention was to see if you had indeed performance advantages out of newer drivers. I remember when the 185 driver got out claiming a performance gain in both Crysis Warhead and FC2; that turner out to be a performance loss!

I wonder if these gains are because of a better cpu usage or something like that, so, comparing drivers in different machines would be sweet, like TOM's on our own

I'm running an E5200@3.8ghz and an EVGA GTS250 sc 512mb..

I have benched so many times FC2 that I can tell the results by heart lol

Fully maxed, exept shadows in very high, 1024x768 4xAA "Ranch Medium"

182.50 Vista
Min. 42
Max. 85~105 (I bench with vsync so it's a frame that always scapes)
Avg. 62

All newer drivers in win 7 give a lower minimum of 31~38 and Avg of 55~59 being 186.18 the most decent. I had high hopes in Win 7 as it beats Vista in some RAM and CPU tests and all the supposed performance optimizations.

I'd like you to inform me of tests on actual games with different drivers so we all may guess what's the progress they are making cause I don't see any except support for their new stuff like ION. whomever wants to join with any card is welcome so we have different results ^^,

It's like Tom's user based silly tests
No really, I'd like some serious tom's article on a plethora of drivers in current most popular cards!

OvrClkr,

We both have (or had i guess now =P ) the GTS250 1gig,

No GPU OC, you hit
Sm2 = 7.2k
Sm3 = 7k

That was with the 190.xx drivers and XPSP3



I hit, with the same card,
Sm2: 5.2k
Sm3: 5.7k

With 186.xx drivers and XPSP3



That is a huge difference, but i would imagine there is more here going on than just drivers.... i mean, there would have to be..

Yeah... sadly i'm stick with just an AM2 board (not even +). I've got a little money saved up but am waiting for the i3 and i5's to come out in hopes that the current stuff drops in price a bit. *shrug*

As always, thanks for the input man 8)



jers, i will try to remember to DL the latest drivers tonight and rerun 3dmark and get something up ^^

I don't use synthetic benchs but I see the dramatic perf difference for you!
Meanwhile I decided to give 190.62 another try since I changed win 7 rc for the RTM a day ago, the sensless performance drop of some old titles is gone, God knows what was happening there :S
Vsync is not working (never did in this driver for me) but the rest is just fine.

FC2 and TrackMania Nations Forever stayed the same as in 186.18.

And what motivated me trying... Darkest of Days Demo, coming out soon. The game has some physX that really put the card to work and 190's log says it's got improvements for the title, they are right

All maxed, AA 4x AF 16x PhysX medium settings

186.18:
38.4822 avg.

190.62
38.4977 avg.

Marginal gains, but there you go. They shut my mouth hahaha. Now, imagine what the PhysX in High will do to the system performance. Oddly enough AA settings didn't do much. Graphically, this'll be a normal game, but God those PhysX, what do they have to be so demanding?!

Hey back Kithzaru,

Thanks for testing, I'm downloading 3dmark06 and after that I'll get 190.62 drivers and compare it to whatever results 182.50 give. Nice finding, now I know it's not me alone whining at nvidia drivers while everybody get more performance out of their hardware month by month

I'll guys let you know when I get those results. For now in windows 7 186 and 190 have no big difference except that vsync is gone in 190s.

Dunno, but I've had it cause graphical corruption on at least one game.

hmmm maybe i should spend more time exploring windows 7 on the spare computer instead of playing WoW on the main......... naaahh..