nVidia Big Bang Driver (GeForce 180.48)
Introduction
As I finished off part 2 of my GTX260+ review (image quality analysis), I decided to do a quick test of nVidia’s recently released Big Bang driver (180.48). The Big Bang driver makes the GTX260+ more competitive with the 4870 in newer titles and nVidia claims performance gains of:
- Up to 10% performance increase in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset).
- Up to 13% performance increase in Assassin’s Creed.
- Up to 13% performance increase in BioShock.
- Up to 15% performance increase in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.
- Up to 10% performance increase in Crysis Warhead.
- Up to 25% performance increase in Devil May Cry 4.
- Up to 38% performance increase in Far Cry 2.
- Up to 18% performance increase in Race Driver: GRID.
- Up to 80% performance increase in Lost Planet: Colonies.
- Up to 18% performance increase in World of Conflict.
I didn’t test all of those games (in fact I only tested Bioshock), but I did test a range of other titles.
The test setup is exactly the same as part 1 of my GTX260+ review, and I’ve picked a selection of benchmarks that were done in that article and retested them with the 180.48 driver as a comparison.
The color-coding in the text charts is as follows: blue means 178.24 wins; yellow means the 180.48 driver wins.
IMO, most of the results you found can be discarded as statiscally insignificant. Nvidia’s claims hold some truth, but only under very specific settings and/or resolutions. They brought more then just FPS gains though
True, but to be fair I only tested one game on nVidia’s list (Bioshock), and I observed a good performance gain there with 4xAA.
If you play the games on nVidia’s list, I have no doubt you could see some good performance gains.