nVidia Geforce 337.50 Beta Drivers Released; Ran some tests on my own

[Crow47]

Just like the title says, today the Geforce 337.50 beta drivers, as well as Geforce Experience 2.0 were released. While the new features in Geforce Experience are certainly interesting, I was more interested if "remaining laser-focused on DirectX 11" was going to have any impact on my performance. After all, I'm running a pair of DX11 Kepler cards in SLI, and with the claimed benefits seen in both Metro: Last Light and Batman: Arkham Origins (two games I am currently playing), I felt a quick download and installation was in order. 

 

But to start things off, I ran the included benchmarks in the two games prior to making any changes to my software. The completely unscientific results are as follows (Avg. FPS, all hardware is at stock clocks):

 

*EDIT* Ran some additional tests in Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider (2013)

 

Batman: Arkham Origins: 51 FPS (All settings set to max at my monitor's native resolution of 2560x1440, Vsync off)

 

Metro: Last Light: 53 FPS (1920x1080, DX11, Physx On, SSAA Off)

 

Tomb Raider: 63.2 FPS (1440p, All Settings on/max, AA= FXAA)

 

Sleeping Dogs: 60.0 FPS (1440p, All Settings on/max AA= FXAA)

 

No surprises for me here, I've been running benchmarks in these games for a few days while I struggle to find a stable OC on my GPU's. Alright, now to the more interesting part. After installing the new Geforce Experience and driver, followed by a reboot, I reran each benchmark.

 

Batman: Arkham Origins: 51 FPS (All settings set to max at my monitor's native resolution of 2560x1440, Vsync off)

 

Metro: Last Light: 56 FPS (1920x1080, DX11, Physx On, SSAA Off)

 

Tomb Raider: 63.6 FPS (1440p, All Settings on/max, AA= FXAA)

 

Sleeping Dogs: 59.9 FPS (1440p, All Settings on/max AA= FXAA)

 

So, as you can see from my results, it would appear I was already getting about as much out of the cards as I have been. That's preferable to a decrease, but slightly disappointing nonetheless. Maybe I allowed myself to get hyped up, but I have to keep in mind these are beta drivers and more changes can will follow that may change what I see here. Obviously, your results will vary, and I'm genuinely curious to know how different DX11 hardware fairs with the new drivers. 

 

*EDIT* More of the same with the new driver on two other DX11 games. 

Edited April 11, 2014 by Crow47

[rivalary]

Thanks for testing and posting your results, I was curious when I heard the announcement.  My only hope is that other games will get a noticeable FPS increase.

[Crow47]

Thanks for testing and posting your results, I was curious when I heard the announcement.  My only hope is that other games will get a noticeable FPS increase.

 

That's my hope as well. I plan on running some more tests when I have time. In the mean time I'm hoping some other users can share their results.

[ClayMeow]

Keep in mind that it's generally dwindling returns from top to bottom. That's why NVIDIA only released benches for the GTX 700 Series and not older ones.

[Crow47]

Keep in mind that it's generally dwindling returns from top to bottom. That's why NVIDIA only released benches for the GTX 700 Series and not older ones.

 

It's all Kepler architecture, though, no?

[ClayMeow]

 

Keep in mind that it's generally dwindling returns from top to bottom. That's why NVIDIA only released benches for the GTX 700 Series and not older ones.

 

It's all Kepler architecture, though, no?

 

And what's your point? There's a reason why NVIDIA never says anything like "10% improvement across all cards" and instead says it like, "up to 10% improvement". The newer cards tend to have better gains.

[cchalogamer]

I didn't get a chance to play with the GTX 670 this morning and test them out, but as far as SLI performance goes BF4 is a LOT smoother for me on the main rig.  With that said with every patch DICE relased it seemed that the min frame rate would get lower and lower and spend more time there, so much so that I went back to turning SLI off for it.  This driver "fixes" that and seemed to give a little boost to single card mode.  So far that's all I've played and I was WAY too lazy to get exact numbers but it does seem better.

[Crow47]

 

 

Keep in mind that it's generally dwindling returns from top to bottom. That's why NVIDIA only released benches for the GTX 700 Series and not older ones.

 

It's all Kepler architecture, though, no?

 

And what's your point? There's a reason why NVIDIA never says anything like "10% improvement across all cards" and instead says it like, "up to 10% improvement". The newer cards tend to have better gains.

 

 

Take it easy, there, buddy! I was just testing a hypothesis when I ran these tests. You're absolutely right, obviously the newer cards have better gains! I know for a fact I'm not the only person with 600-series cards who was inquisitive about what the new drivers would mean for them. I'm merely sharing my experience.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Crow47

[ClayMeow]

 

 

 

Keep in mind that it's generally dwindling returns from top to bottom. That's why NVIDIA only released benches for the GTX 700 Series and not older ones.

 

It's all Kepler architecture, though, no?

 

And what's your point? There's a reason why NVIDIA never says anything like "10% improvement across all cards" and instead says it like, "up to 10% improvement". The newer cards tend to have better gains.

 

 

Take it easy, there, buddy! I was just testing a hypothesis when I ran these tests. You're absolutely right, obviously the newer cards have better gains! I know for a fact I'm not the only person with 600-series cards who was inquisitive about what the new drivers would mean for them. I'm merely sharing my experience.

 

And I wasn't saying anything against your results or post. I stated that dwindling returns are the norm and then you questioned my statement.

[Waco]

And what's your point? There's a reason why NVIDIA never says anything like "10% improvement across all cards" and instead says it like, "up to 10% improvement". The newer cards tend to have better gains.

His point was that cards of the same architecture tend to get the same percentage improvements with new drivers.

 

This isn't the case here but it does usually hold true.

[DanTheGamer11]

Are those games normally cpu bottlenecked by a 3770K?? 

[WarWeeny]

Are those games normally cpu bottlenecked by a 3770K?? 

 

No, because the CPU rarely bottleneck anything these days