GeForce 258.96 Performance Analysis – Dragon Platform

Test Configuration & Driver Release Notes

• AMD Phenom II 550 X2 (reference 3.1 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz)
• ECS A890-GXM-A (AMD 890-GX chipset, 02/25/2010 BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 8x+8x; supplied by ECS).
• 4 GB DDR3 PC 1600 Kingston RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB, supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTX 480 (NVIDIA reference version stock clocks, supplied by NVIDIA)
  
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• 2 – 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives
• Thermaltake ToughPowerXT 775 watt power supply and Element G case, supplied by Thermaltake
• HP LP 3065 2560×1600 30 inch LCD
  

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 257.21 and 258.96 (WHQL) “High Quality”
  
• Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium; very latest updates
• DirectX May, 2010
• All games are patched to their latest versions.

• vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.
• 8xAA enabled in all games (unless specified as 4xAA) and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3; all in-game settings at “maximum” or “ultra” with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths; DX11 titles under DX11 render paths and DX9c, etc.
  

The Benchmarks

• Far Cry 2
• Crysis
• F.E.A.R.
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Just Cause 2
  
• World in Conflict
• Call of Juarez
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
  
• Left4Dead
• Lost Planet
• Cryostasis (newly added to benching suite)
• X3:Terran Conflict
• Enemy Territories: Quake Wars
• ARMA2
• H.A.W.X.
• Battleforge
• Dirt 2
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat
• Serious Sam, The Second Encounter (HD 2010)
  
• Resident Evil 5
• Alien versus Predator
  
• Heaven (Unigine) 1.0

Release highlight notes for WHQL GeForce 258.96

This is the second driver release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs. You can download for your appropriate operating system the drivers by starting here.  You will also note we put a (check) next to the games that we tested.

New in Version 258.96

• Adds support for GeForce GTX 460.
• Adds support for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology. Learn more about this technology including the hardware and software requirements here.
• Adds additional performance increases for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games (these improvements are in addition to the previously reported Release 256 improvements). The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

• Up to 11% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on) (check)
• Up to 7% in Crysis: Warhead (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Gamer)
• Up to 4% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High) (check)
• Up to 10% in Just Cause 2 (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Concrete Jungle) (check)
• Up to 6% in Metro 2033 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 10% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF) (check)
• Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 4% in World in Conflict (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)

• Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0224.
• Upgrades HD Audio driver version 1.0.15.0 (for supported GPUs).
• Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.

New in Release 258.96 Drivers

*Adds support for Blu-ray 3D with NVIDIA 3D Vision technology. Learn more about the hardware and software requirements here .
*Increases performance for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

• • Up to 14% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920×1200 noAA/AF – Tessellation on) (check)
  • Up to 4% in Batman: Arkham Asylum (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF PhysX=High) (check)
  • Up to 5% in BattleForge (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High settings) (check)
  • Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
  • Up to 4% in Crysis: Warhead (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Enthusiast setting)
  • Up to 24% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (1920×1200 no AA/AF) (check)
  • Up to 9% in Far Cry 2 (2560×1600 8xAA/16xAF) (check)
  • Up to 25% in Just Cause 2 (2560×1600 no AA/AF – Concrete Jungle) (check)
  • Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1920×1200 no AA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
  • Up to 40% in Metro 2033 with SLI ((1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
  • Up to 8% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 no AA/AF – Day) (check)
  • Up to 110% in Stone Giant with SLI (2650×1600 – Tessellation on, DoF on)
  • Up to 6% in The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena (2560×1600 no AA/AF)
  • Up to 9% in Unigine: Tropics (2560×1600 no AA/AF – OpenGL)
  • Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Performance and Extreme Presets) (check)
  • Up to 19% with Transparency AA (1920×1200 4xTrSS – measured in Crysis)

• Adds support for OpenGL 4.0 for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs.
• Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations. See CUDA Zone for more details.
• Adds support for new extreme Antialiasing modes for 3-way SLI PCs, including up to SLI48x AA for GeForce 200 series GPUs and up to SLI96x AA for GeForce GTX 400 series GPUs.
• Adds support for a new ‘Quality’ mode for NVIDIA’s Ambient Occlusion control panel feature.
• Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.
• Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel feature for ultimate control over CUDA GPUs, allowing the user to effectively choose which GPU will power each CUDA application.

Additional Information:

* Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5 .
* Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here .
* Supports the new version of MotionDSP’s video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here .
* Supports DirectCompute with Windows 7 and GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports OpenCL 1.0 ( Open Computing Language ) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel X58-based motherboards.
* Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software .

Let’s head right for the results of our performance testing of GeForce 257.21 versus 258.96.