Nvidia Releases 314.21 Beta Drivers With Tomb Raider Performance Optimizations

With Nvidia's previous drivers, AMD cards had a notable advantage over Nvidia's GPUs, especially with TressFX enabled in the new Tomb Raider that was just released. The new 314.21 beta driver aims to close this gap a bit.

Beyond the performance gap closing, the new driver also aims to increase Tomb Raider's stability and remove potential artifacts on normally functioning cards.

Lastly, the new drivers also add a number of new SLI and 3D Vision profiles.

The 314.21 beta driver is available for download here.

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Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • bystander
    I've already tested these. It may make some systems more stable, which was not a problem for me, but it does not help the CPU bottleneck that causes sub 30 FPS in a couple spots.
    Reply
  • AleisterCrowley
    That's some good news, there no reason to get behind, this game uses open solutions not AMD particular techs, although AMD cards are usually better at direct computing. NVIDIA and AMD, please, keep the fight.
    Reply
  • jhatfie
    This is good news, my HTPC with a 660ti crashes playing Tomb Raider a lot, so much that I stopped trying. Not related to OC as all other games including Crysis 3, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, etc which stress it more run perfect. My 7950 in my main gaming rig runs the game much, much better, hopefully these drivers will add stability.
    Reply
  • unksol
    Man nvidia drivers SUCK. It's good to see them try and improve but why are their gpus so far behind on performance and their drivers so unstable and performing so badly?

    /justice
    Reply
  • nolarrow
    This driver bricked my gtx 570. Swapped out to my old gtx 260, same problem "windows kernel nvidia driver failure blha blah blah." Just finished formatting (thank god for ssd's) and using the 260 atm. Will try the 570 later. Skip the driver if you can. Hopefully my 570 is still ok - even if it is this update wrecked my windows install at a minimum.
    Reply
  • NuclearShadow
    Although my 7950 will be coming tomorrow I'm still glad to hear this. My 460 simply did not like this game at all. Crashing, performance issues no matter the settings. Glad to see Nvidia got the issues straightened out.
    Reply
  • thomron1977
    my 680 crahed with these drivers to a blue screen. i used the bluescreen program that reads the crash dumps and googled what was wrong. it was the videocard and the drivers. hope this is fixed soon.
    Reply
  • renz496
    10519824 said:
    Man nvidia drivers SUCK. It's good to see them try and improve but why are their gpus so far behind on performance and their drivers so unstable and performing so badly?

    /justice

    :lol:

    10519919 said:
    This driver bricked my gtx 570. Swapped out to my old gtx 260, same problem "windows kernel nvidia driver failure blha blah blah." Just finished formatting (thank god for ssd's) and using the 260 atm. Will try the 570 later. Skip the driver if you can. Hopefully my 570 is still ok - even if it is this update wrecked my windows install at a minimum.

    work just fine for me. so far no crash in any games that i played. it might not work for you but it doesn't mean it will do the same for others.
    Reply
  • unksol
    unksolMan nvidia drivers SUCK. It's good to see them try and improve but why are their gpus so far behind on performance and their drivers so unstable and performing so badly? /justice
    Lol thumb me down. It's sarcasm for the years of "AMD drivers suck" from nvidia fanboys. When they have been awesome for over a year. Why do people get so offended when their myth is challenged by reality?

    I am deeply sorry nvidia drivers suddenly suck at launch on games where they can't bribe studios??

    That's totally my fault. I am also sorry nvidia has had their ass kicked for over a year on hardware and was horrifically slow releasing cards. Up to 9 months late.

    all the fanboys need to get over the BS and deal with reality. It goes both ways
    Reply
  • bystander
    10520488 said:
    unksolMan nvidia drivers SUCK. It's good to see them try and improve but why are their gpus so far behind on performance and their drivers so unstable and performing so badly? /justice
    Lol thumb me down. It's sarcasm for the years of "AMD drivers suck" from nvidia fanboys. When they have been awesome for over a year. Why do people get so offended when their myth is challenged by reality?

    I am deeply sorry nvidia drivers suddenly suck at launch on games where they can't bribe studios??

    That's totally my fault. I am also sorry nvidia has had their ass kicked for over a year on hardware and was horrifically slow releasing cards. Up to 9 months late.

    all the fanboys need to get over the BS and deal with reality. It goes both ways

    One game does not a trend make. It's not like AMD doesn't have issues.
    Reply