Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480: Before And After A Year Of Driver Updates

By Andrew Ku
published

Are you dutiful about keeping your drivers up-to-date? Nvidia does a pretty good job of maintaining a regular release schedule. Today we look at how much performance you can expect from an old card in new games using four driver packages.

Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2

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Header Cell - Column 0 1680x1050No AA/2x AF1680x10508x AA/ 16x AF1920x1080No AA/2x AF1920x10808x AA/ 16x AF2560x1600No AA/2x AF2560x16008x AA/ 16x AF
Percent Gainfrom 197.41 to 266.585.66%5.66%9.38%9.05%9.73%26.28%

Even though this game was released prior to the 197.41 driver, its results are less impressive than they were in F1 2010 and Aliens vs. Predators. Overall, we still see improvements , but the situation is less clear when we examine them from one driver to the next.

All graphs show the largest improvement after upgrading to 257.41. At 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 with maxed-out AA/AF values, the drop in performance starts at 260.89 and is followed by another at 266.58. This is largely absent at 2560x1600, where performance doesn't really change after updating to 257.21.

Andrew Ku
37 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    Heh, now it cooks my steaks 5 secs faster.

    Oh wait... I'm using a GT425M on my notebook... Damn!

    Cheers!
    Reply
  • theyohan
    I hear good things about that new Nvidia 270.51 beta driver.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    Impressive results to say the least... well, except for WOW. That has to be a bit of a disappointment for the people who care about that title. But otherwise quite remarkable performance optimizations from the driver team.

    I have to agree with the conclusion, due to the recent nature of the Fermi architecture it probably took both Nvidia and developers time to get used to the new hardware. It just wasn't well optimized upon launch. Although I think it's worth noting that it still managed to perform well even on those early drivers.
    Reply
  • andy5174
    GTX480/470/465.... Fail
    Reply
  • ezodagrom
    In the World of Warcraft page instead of saying "Percent Gain from 197.41 to 266.58" it says "Percent Gain from 9.10 to 11.1". ;P
    Reply
  • acku
    9512364 said:
    In the World of Warcraft page instead of saying "Percent Gain from 197.41 to 266.58" it says "Percent Gain from 9.10 to 11.1". ;P

    Oops! My motto: Pobody's Nerfect. :kaola:

    Fixed!
    Reply
  • cpy
    257.21 looks best for me as wow player and sc2 player :)
    Reply
  • gofasterstripes
    TBH it looks like good work from the green team. Cool, my 470 is getting bumped for free
    On second thoughts, maybe 'cool' is the wrong word.....
    Reply
  • Mario75
    andy5174GTX480/470/465.... Fail
    Nope - trolls actually FAIL.Also your "comment" FAIL
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    mayankleoboy1only 465 was fail. just like the 5830.
    Cough 6790
    Reply