New Nvidia Drivers Boost Up Fermi Performance
The new drivers that came out with GTX 460 support make the entire Fermi family faster.
Along with the GeForce GTX 460 release yesterday, Nvidia also brought out some new drivers to support it. But even for those without the new 460 GPU, any gamer with a Fermi-based GPU will be able to realize some performance gains in the 258.96 WHQL-candidate drivers.
· Adds additional performance increases for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games (these improvements are in addition to the previously reported Release 256 improvements). The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
- Up to 11% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 7% in Crysis: Warhead (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Gamer)
- Up to 4% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High)
- Up to 10% in Just Cause 2 (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF - Concrete Jungle)
- Up to 6% in Metro 2033 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 10% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
- Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
- Up to 4% in World in Conflict (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Grab those drivers right here (be sure to select the GTX 460 in the pull down to get the new release mentioned in this post).
UPDATE July 19: These are now WHQL now.

WTF are you smoking? ATI and Nvidia both have buggy drivers from time to time... just a few months ago they released some bad ones like the one that killed the ability to oc the cards. Don't be blinded by your fanboydom.
It couldn't hurt to try, I'm using them on my little 9500GT and my desktop is performing great!
Seriously, did adobe include some heavy graphic editing in their pro cs5 or is it just a good-ole overkill?
It wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.
See above comment ^
The little 9500 that could!
Seriously, did adobe include some heavy graphic editing in their pro cs5 or is it just a good-ole overkill?
Yeah, Adobe has been putting a lot of effort into GPU acceleration. I don't know much about Premier, but I use Photoshop a lot, and it definitely speeds up a lot of tasks for me.
True!
Nvidia has always had solid drivers that solve more problems, not create them like another video card maker we know....
Well, that is not entirely true. To be fair, nVidia has had their fair share of screw-ups with with their drivers. They have on a few occassions now, introduced some annoying and even nasty, harmful bugs into their drivers (i.e. the fan speed control bug). But, the drivers have been getting better again which is always welcome.
I'll have to check these drivers out when I get home, though I will probably keep my eye on their forums just to make sure their aren't any problems reported, before I download them.
WTF are you smoking? ATI and Nvidia both have buggy drivers from time to time... just a few months ago they released some bad ones like the one that killed the ability to oc the cards. Don't be blinded by your fanboydom.
Yeah with all the hd video now its almost all accelerated through the video card. You should take a look at some of it. Its really cool.
I would try it when you have a bit of additional time and see what happens. If there are any problems in Adobe then you can rollback the drivers.
The point of GPU acceleration is to make things a lot quicker, not increase the flashyness of effects. Those who spend the money on CS5 and a new Fermi card are likely professionals who can make a lot more money if they can work faster. Say you are working on a $1,200 job that would usually take 20 hours to complete but with less time waiting for loading it now only takes you 15 hours. That is a 33% pay raise.
He's just trolling. I'm all for Nvidia coming out with better drivers (have GTX 470), but comments like that are just begging for a thumbs down...
The way I see it is that neither company has a perfect track record for drivers. Let's focus on the here and now. These new drivers are a good thing, and I am glad Nvidia is putting an effort into trying to make Fermi better.
One thing that I DONT like so far is the huge idle temp increase when using two monitors. This seriously needs to be addressed and fixed if possible. Running the card at full speed all the time just does not make sense. Can't they get it to run at a lower speed and still avoid monitor flicker?
I'm looking forward to the next WHQL drivers, though.
Adobe slowed down the program in major ways adding eye candy. (Not functional features, just fancy looking menus and transparent dialog boxes.) So, in order to bring it back up to a usable point, they added GPU acceleration. It's still a little slow on a 4870, I know that much. I haven't tried it on my new GTX 470 yet to see how big of an improvement it is. The feature differences between CS3, CS4, and CS5 are pretty small except for the interface level eye candy. All fluff, no substance. Most people wouldn't see the difference between them functionally.
So long as you're not doing much more than 2D desktop stuff and watching the odd HD movie here and there it's a splendid little card that can even run some of the less demanding pre 2006 games but anything more than that and you'd be better off with something else.
How is initially releasing drivers that are that far from optimal somehow impressive?
I hope you`re using the hack for mercury playback engine along with that.