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: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

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Header Cell - Column 0 1680x1050No AA/No AF1680x10508x MSAA/16x AF1920x1080No AA/No AF1920x10808x MSAA/16x AF2560x1600No AA/No AF2560x16008x MSAA/16x AF
Percent Gainfrom 197.41 to 266.5878.29%55.09%67.17%47.68%47.11%32.31%

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 exhibits the most impressive results in our benchmark suite. Released one month prior to the 480's launch (and therefore available when each of these drivers went live), there isn't a single case in which we see less than a 30% performance jump.

Yet, the trends are the most interesting part of this. At 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 without AA/AF, we see a very staggered graph. We found that upgrading to 260.89 dropped performance slightly, though they were still higher than the initial scores (197.41). Once you get past the jump from 197.41 to 257.21, the four other charts show a fairly linear progression from driver to driver. Across the board, it's that first update that introduces the largest performance gain.

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