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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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.
KT_WASPAre 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).
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.
