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

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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: 3DMark 11 (DX11)

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Header Cell - Column 0 Overall ScoreGraphics ScoreGT1GT2GT3GT4
Performance Gain from 197.41 to 266.5813.60%8.87%10.56%9.05%9.72%6.98%

Compared to AMD, Nvidia's improvement in 3DMark 11 is particularly notable. Whereas the Radeon HD 5870 improved 2.5% since 3DMark 11 launched, the GeForce GTX 480 is approaching a 15% jump in the same short time. The jump in the graph above is indicative of roughly when the benchmark came out, suggesting Nvidia had work to do before the GF100 put its best face forward in 3DMark.

Nvidia and AMD demonstrate similar trends in that the GeForce GTX 480 and Radeon HD 5870 both show the largest improvement in the GT1 test.

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