New Nvidia Drivers 295.73 Improve Performance in Skyrim
Nvidia has released a new GeForce 295.73 WHQL-certified driver that offers up to 45 percent performance increase in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Nvidia set out to improve the performance of Bethesda Softworks’ role-playing action game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with its latest drivers. In Nvidia's first WHQL-certified driver from the R295 family drives, the new drivers are able to provide substantial performance increases. Looking at the GTX 560 performance in both single card and SLI mode, the GTX 560 saw a performance increase of 44.5 percent using Skyrim's ultra detail graphics options. The performance went up to 40 frames per second versus the previous GeForce 285.62 WHQL-certified driver, which maintained a 27.7 frames per second. In SLI mode, the GTX 560 saw a performance increase of 44.1 percent. Taking the look at the GTX 580, we see a performance increase of 36 percent with a single card and 17.3 percent increase in SLI mode.
When you look at the "Outdoor Scene", we see the new driver doesn't show the same overall performance increase. Taking a closer look at the Outdoor scene, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim becomes more bottle-necked by the CPU than by the graphics card at the higher resolutions. The GTX 560 did see a slight performance increase of 16.2 percent in the "Outdoor Scene".
Overview of the changes and improvements with the new R295 family according to Nvidia:
- Game-changing performance boost of up to 45 percent in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Up to 2x performance Mass Effect 3 with SLI technology.
- GeForce-exclusive quality enhancements with ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
- New 3D Vision and SLI profiles for over 50 titles.
- New PhysX software v9.12.0209 for the best experience in top PhysX titles like Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.
The new GeForce 295.73 WHQL-certified driver is supported by all GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 Series cards as well as ION GPUs, and can be downloaded here: GeForce Drivers
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Please... ME3 can be maxed out with one $150 card and no one will build a SLI of cards below that value.
"New Nvidia Drivers 295.73 Improve Performance in Skyrim"
Ok, I'll go first: I had 285.xx driver once, but then I got an arrow to the knee...
Its great to see drivers like these that really do increase your performance, feels like a free upgrade, just hope BF3 would get some more tweaks.
Performance: 285.62 + Skyrim = 295.73 + Skyrim + Hi Rez pack.
not bad for indoors
Are those 3rd party results (ie Tom's own) or are those results published by Nvidia?
If supplied by Nvidia then I will take it with a grain of salt. I have seen both Nvidia and ATI/AMD make bold claims about performance increases from diver updates and the actual real world results hardly ever reflect the graphs provided by the company.
If they are indeed actual 3rd party tests and results, then kudos to Nvidia, because that is a good jump in performance.
I haven't tested with Skyrim yet, but I've noticed some flickering on my Windows 7 Desktop since upgrading. My other games are fine though. I may wipe and re-install the new drivers.
Are those 3rd party results (ie Tom's own) or are those results published by Nvidia?
More than likely they are from Nvidia judging by the choice of colors (black and green).
BF3 with 285.62 drivers was solid for 3 weeks on my new build.
BF3 with 295 drivers has crashed 2x in less than an hour.
I notice loads take longer between areas in Skyrim now but that may be due to HD texture pack and some stuttering in new areas that goes away after a little while. This is on a 590GTX 3 screens at 5760x1080. I may go back to regular textures just because of the load times. They used to be very quick. I have also had video player crash when trying to play a large file size, maybe unrelated to driver but I have always prided myself on how stable the system has always been so it is unusual and only started after driver update.
Not fanboy-ing here at all because i like to use what works in regards to performance.
For Skyrim:
Had a GTX 460 1GB and kept getting a driver crash but it would then recover, frames were good in game with jacked-settings but sometimes choppy indoors. Reinstalling windows and using different driver versions did not resolve the issue.
Same results with a GTX 480 on a different rig, good frames but interrupted here and there by that driver crash message.
Switched to a 6950 1GB, same settings, OC a little, all is well, no choppiness and no crashes.
If Nvidia could get rid of that driver crashing issue i would install my 480 again and let her rip... It's a common issue it seems after googling it.
... It's a common issue it seems after googling it.
To be honest I never had any choppiness or stuttering before the driver update even at Ultra. The only stuttering has been on loading new areas and I blame it on the HD texture pack more than anything and the very high res. I'm pushing. I can live without the high res since it looks good either way I think.
The drivers have worked for me without fail on my 2 580s in SLI. I play BF3 in 2D at 120Hz. I play Skyrim in 3D at 60Hz. Skyrim is pretty intense in 3D. A great experience.
Now that EVERYONE has finished the game...
Awesome, gonna try the new drivers out as soon as I get home..
Anyone still playing skyrim? Seriously? Also I had problems installing the 3dvision drivers for some reason.
This might sound dumb, but I usually play a game after a few solid months/1 year after its release, when all the patches/DLCs/drivers are done fixing up good/improving the game. As the best example, when I played Mass Effect 2, the game worked like a charm, virtually no bugs, a ton of content, and great fun. By that time, all of what was missing was the yet unreleased "Arival", which I've completed afterwards.
Anyone still playing skyrim? Seriously? Also I had problems installing the 3dvision drivers for some reason.
Of course people still play Skyrim. It is not that old, they just released the mod tools, and it has hundreds of hours of gameplay. So unless you completed Everything there is to do in Skyrim, (In which case you should probably take a shower since you haven't moved from in front of the screen since release) then there is more than enough reasons to still be playing Skyrim.
my dual screen setup stop working with 295.73 ...went back to 285.62...works fine now.
Btw, there was a SERIOUS driver issu on pre-295 drivers, where you got a black screen on Windows Movie Maker. I was forced to use 29x beta drivers in order to make WMM to work, hope they got a permanent fix.
Now i really cant wait to pick up skyrim for half price during the next steam holiday sale!
have zotac 560, and q6600, unclocked it wasnt doing to well on medium.
Clocked it from 820 to 925 original volt, and cpu a littlebit aswell from 2.4 to 2.8ghz. Could play on high everything without a problem, now with this upgrade i can play the game maxed out, amazing!
Very nice gains. Makes me wonder just how much more all cards can perform if you give it the absolute best drivers.
fus ro dah
Are those 3rd party results (ie Tom's own) or are those results published by Nvidia?
This is your first time seeing an nVIDIA GeForce driver performance slide? Wow. I would of thought the green and black theme would of been a dead giveaway regardless.
*shrugs*
I wish there was an even lower quality ambient occlusion option, I enjoy having it, but I don't like the performance hit.
I'm happy that my video card isn't intermittently crashing/losing signal with my monitor everytime I'm on Firefox. That was a problem with one of the more recent NVIDIA drivers.
Please rename this driver into 295.73 skyrim edition, as it doesnt really help on other games other than breaking it. Yes BF3 still have prob with this.
More than likely they are from Nvidia judging by the choice of colors (black and green).
Yes, those are from Nvidia. I've looked at their charts before, exactly the same colour scheme and layout.
It's just amazing how much better Skyrim runs now on my Phenom II+GTX460 than it did at launch. My lowest FPS in Whiterun used to be 19 FPS. Now it's 33 FPS, even with the high-res texture pack installed and Performance Ambient Occlusion enabled. This is is in "Ultra" mode but with FXAA instead of "real" FSAA.
new SLI profile for over 50 titles, EXCEPT ALAN WAKE!!!!