{"id":8953,"date":"2009-06-28T12:52:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-28T12:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=8953"},"modified":"2009-07-01T09:42:17","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T09:42:17","slug":"nvidia-18618-driver-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/nvidia-18618-driver-test\/","title":{"rendered":"nVidia 186.18 Driver Test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--pagetitle:Introduction--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Introduction<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Today I\u2019ll be testing nVidia\u2019s latest official driver (version <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">186.18<\/span>), and I\u2019ll compare it to my previously installed driver (version <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">185.85<\/span>).<\/p>\n<p>My CRT recently died and while I\u2019m deciding on a replacement LCD, I\u2019m using a temporary LCD whose maximum resolution is 1680&#215;1050. As a consequence, all benchmarks today will be restricted to titles that are still demanding at said resolution. All titles will also be run with 4xAA.<\/p>\n<p>TrAA will also be used where possible and playable with <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">SS<\/span> denoting super-sampling, and <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">MS<\/span> denoting multi-sampling.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, the text charts are color coded and <span style=\"color: #ccffcc;\">green<\/span> means 185.85 is faster, while <span style=\"color: #ffff99;\">yellow<\/span> means 186.18 is faster.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Setup--> <strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hardware<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (reference 3 GHz clock). <\/li>\n<li>nVidia GeForce GTX285 (1 GB, nVidia reference clocks).<\/li>\n<li>4 GB DDR2-800 RAM (4\u00d71 GB, dual-channel). <\/li>\n<li>Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R (Intel G33 chipset, F7 BIOS). <\/li>\n<li>Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic.<\/li>\n<li>22\u201d LCD (maximum resolution 1680&#215;1050).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Software<\/span> <\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows XP 32 bit SP3<\/li>\n<li>nVidia driver 186.18 and 185.85, high quality filtering, all optimizations off, LOD clamp enabled. <\/li>\n<li>DirectX March 2009. <\/li>\n<li>All games patched to their latest versions. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Settings<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16xAF forced in the driver, vsync forced off in the driver. <\/li>\n<li>AA forced either through the driver or enabled in-game, whichever works better. <\/li>\n<li>Since I\u2019m on XP, all DX10 titles were run under DX9 render paths. <\/li>\n<li>Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games. <\/li>\n<li>All results show an average framerate. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <!--nextpage--> <!--pagetitle:Benchmarks--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Benchmarks<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\">\n  <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8955\" title=\"text\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/text.png?resize=317%2C289\" alt=\"text\" title=\"text\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/text.png 317w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/text-300x273.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br \/>\n  <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8956\" title=\"graph\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/graph.png?resize=546%2C469\" alt=\"graph\" title=\"graph\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/graph.png 546w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/graph-300x257.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 546px) 100vw, 546px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--> <!--pagetitle:Conclusion--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Conclusion<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Based on the results produced today, there\u2019s no significant performance difference between 186.18 and 185.85.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" 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src=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/article-image.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7814,7],"tags":[1226,1703,900,121],"class_list":["post-8953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-technology","tag-1226","tag-1703","tag-gtx285","tag-nvidia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}