New Nvidia Drivers Boost Up Fermi Performance

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[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]I hope you`re using the hack for mercury playback engine along with that.[/citation]
Absolutely the only way to go. Makes a world of difference. (Sooner or later the hack shouldn't be necessary. Adobe insiders expect the GTX-470 to be on an upcoming list of "approved/enabled" CUDA-capable cards for Premiere Pro CS5.)
 
[citation][nom]HardwareJay[/nom]Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 makes deliberate, very heavy use of the CUDA capabilities of the GTX-470 and a short list of previous CUDA-capable cards that are now outdated in light of the GTX-470 and other members of the Fermie line. Reports are nothing less than dramatic. Google it.[/citation]
See my other post directly above. For now this has to be enabled with a hack. It's not yet officially approved and is not yet even enabled in Premiere Pro CS5 for the GTX-470.
 
[citation][nom]HardwareJay[/nom]See my other post directly above. For now this has to be enabled with a hack. It's not yet officially approved and is not yet even enabled in Premiere Pro CS5 for the GTX-470.[/citation]
I know .. but they say it doesn`t work unless bla bla .. and yet you can start using that with 9800 GT ... as for ATI support it seems they might consider it in CS6, but i really doubt they will do it since it seems is an Adobe + nVidia marketing thing.
 
[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]I know .. but they say it doesn`t work unless bla bla .. and yet you can start using that with 9800 GT ... as for ATI support it seems they might consider it in CS6, but i really doubt they will do it since it seems is an Adobe + nVidia marketing thing.[/citation]These comments you're making are really not based on knowledge. You should do some searching before commenting further. I am very involved with the groups of techs that are at the highest levels of Adobe and of implementation of Premiere Pro CS5 (developers, forum moderators, beta testers, and video production professionals). The hack to capitalize on the capabilities of the GTX-470 works, and makes all the difference.
 
[citation][nom]Stryter[/nom]Well, that is not entirely true. To be fair, nVidia has had their fair share of screw-ups with with their drivers. They have on a few occassions now, introduced some annoying and even nasty, harmful bugs into their drivers (i.e. the fan speed control bug). But, the drivers have been getting better again which is always welcome. I'll have to check these drivers out when I get home, though I will probably keep my eye on their forums just to make sure their aren't any problems reported, before I download them.[/citation]

This is the exact reason I told a friend of mine to install the 197.45 drivers just last night on his fresh Win 7 install.
 
[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]Boosts and boosts. Only on single resolution/AA/AF setting. But nice "marketing" from nvidia as usual.[/citation]

Booo, you say only a single res/aa/af setting, for most people this is the "highest" setting unless you own a 30" monitor. Getting 10% more performance in STALKER at 1920x1200 with 4aa 16af is a good thing and you try to make it a negative.

Also, I doubt the drivers only improve with one setting. Did you expect them to list every single resolution/aa/af combo possible?
 
[citation][nom]victomofreality[/nom]WTF are you smoking? ATI and Nvidia both have buggy drivers from time to time... just a few months ago they released some bad ones like the one that killed the ability to oc the cards. Don't be blinded by your fanboydom.[/citation]

For about a 6 year stretch from approximately 2000 to 2006, ATI drivers were incredibly bad. In nearly every single game available on the market, there was a note in the "readme.txt" that listed some sort of known problem with certain ATI card models or drivers. I stopped paying any attention to ATI since then, which is why my estimate ends around 2006.

I have heard better things about their drivers for the last couple of years, but it was that long stretch of time that, imo, ruined ATI's reputation for quality drivers and it still echoes in people's ears today.


 
I too have been bit by ATI drivers too many times.

Originally, I had a Rage Pro, then an All-in-One Wonder (yes I'm dating myself). They had horrible drivers. Upgraded to a Riva TNT2 Ultra, then the Geforces, and never looked back.

I tried a Radeon 9700 after a couple years, but the Linux drivers were absolute crap.

Now I just buy Nvidia. 8800 GTS works great in Windows and Linux. Maybe next upgrade cycle I'll think about it, but as long as Nvidia's performance is at least comparable, I doubt I'll switch to ATI.
 
For the most part, I love my 5850 ATI card, but I must say, I still prefer Nvidia drivers. If Nvidia had released FERMI last year, I would probably have one of those (or the 460), but they dropped the ball and I went with ATI.
 
[citation][nom]LeJay[/nom]How is initially releasing drivers that are that far from optimal somehow impressive?[/citation]
I'm sorry, but this is just a profoundly ignorant (or maybe just fanboyish?) comment. Driver optimizations have always been an integral part of the life cycle of a GPU, and any ATI or Nvidia user has become accustomed to, and for the most part, greatly appreciative of these speedups. Any good GPU architecture will be capable of these improvements simply because early drivers never realize the full potential of a new GPU. What should disappoint you is the exact opposite, not seeing any performance/driver optimizations, and not seeing any new features or functionality added to your graphics investment following its release. I've just never heard anyone make this argument before: I'm disappointed and unimpressed because these performance improvements should have been included from the start, or not released at all...

HardwareJay wasn't complementing the early beta drivers initially used upon release, he was complementing the performance increases seen across such a small number of driver iterations. And also keep in mind that those initial beta drivers that were "far from optimal" still allowed the GTX480 and 470 an overall performance lead over the HD5870 and 5850 respectively, albeit while consuming a lot more power. All this while competing against ATI's 10.3 driver with massive performance optimizations over their initial 5000 series driver releases.

Check back with the latest benchmarks, the GTX 470 is now capable of outperforming the HD5870 in many DX10/11 titles at maximum settings such as Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2, BattleForge, HAWX, DIRT 2 etc (sometimes by a significant margin). And in some cases the GTX 480 performs dangerously close to the HD5970. Then there's the excellent SLI scaling and minimum frame rates to factor in, two aspects of the GTX 400 series that continue to be developed.

And these improvements from Nvidia and ATI are all thanks to driver optimizations following those unimpressive and "far from optimal" initial beta drivers, or those things you don't like so much apparently.
 
[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]Boosts and boosts. Only on single resolution/AA/AF setting. But nice "marketing" from nvidia as usual.[/citation]
Ya dude, that's how it's done, and always has been done as far as I know, by both ATI and Nvidia. Keep in mind that these release notes are this specific only to site the settings that experience the most significant performance improvements, but other smaller performance increases are usually experienced in a much broader range of settings. Is there a better method that you would use to implement driver optimizations?
 
With better drivers from Nvidia, I'm thinking of getting a GTX 460 1gb and have plans to add another one later for my new build.They already outperform a GTX 480 when SLIed.
 
I for one support Meat81’s post about ATI having poor driver and software abilities/capabilities. A few months ago, I purchased an ATI 5970 and installed the latest WHQL drivers that were out during the time period I had the card (Catalyst 10.2 WHQL). To my surprise, the card could display flickering textures, low FPS during some random instances and no vsync during game play. My current system consisted of Core i7 975 @ 3.33Ghz (no overclock) EVGA Classified X58 motherboard, 12Gig of Corsair 1066Mhz RAM at 9-9-9-24-48 2T timings and two WD VelociRaptor 300Gig hard drives configured for RAID0 with Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition. I completely agree with Meat81’s statement. Due to ATI’s poor ability to still have way too many bugs/issues, I happily took the ATI Saphire 5970 card out and sold the item on Ebay. When Nvidia released the GTX480, I happily purchased the card and am currently using it without incident. I will never buy another ATI product again, I should have learned my lessons from the past but I couldn’t help wait for Nvidia to release a DirectX11 capable product, but this time I will. For anyone attacking someone for the truth, they are the true fanboys and deserve no attention. You can’t tell me ATI and NVIDIA are the same when it comes to bugs/issues, check the ATI Forums and you can see line after line, post after post of complaints/issues. Nvidia has issues, but NOWHERE as near as ATI, and it never will. So… while ATI throws hotfix after hotfix, patch after patch, they will never be as efficient as NVIDIA when it comes to driver support. Ohh, by the way, the only MAJOR issue NVIDIA had was with the fan driver bug, and that was just recently; ATI has had issues year after year and will continue to do so. For those of you ignorant people, here is a link for their superior product,

Link http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=260&forumid=11

I’ve learned to turn away from such bad products, hopefully others will do the same. beloved patriot Luck…

 
Nvidia is getting better and stronger which I celebrate, and today I am considering a 460 as my option over a 5850. Good for Nvidia, and AMD is also selling more CPUs. More competition!!!
 
[citation][nom]campisia[/nom]A few months ago, I purchased an ATI 5970 and installed the latest WHQL drivers that were out during the time period I had the card (Catalyst 10.2 WHQL). To my surprise, the card could display flickering textures, low FPS during some random instances and no vsync during game play.[/citation]
Yaa... it's the HD5000 series micro-stutter that a lot of people complain about. It's really nothing new though, many previous gen cards from both ATI and Nvidia suffered from this problem from time to time, especially in more graphically demanding games. Micro-stutter on the GTX400 series seems to be practically non-existent however, and is accompanied by excellent min fps. Many have attributed this to the cache hierarchy in the Fermi architecture, and the large shared L2 cache. However, this may also be to blame for the GTX400 series unusually stable fps, which doesn't seem to fluctuate nearly as much as the HD5000 series or previous gen cards, resulting in lower max fps as well. It's an architecture that benefits twitch gamers who play a lot of first person shooters, or general haters of lag.
[citation][nom]campisia[/nom]I will never buy another ATI product again, I should have learned my lessons from the past but I couldn’t help wait for Nvidia to release a DirectX11 capable product, but this time I will... Nvidia has issues, but NOWHERE as near as ATI, and it never will. So… while ATI throws hotfix after hotfix, patch after patch, they will never be as efficient as NVIDIA when it comes to driver support.[/citation]
I've heard some editors discuss the issue of ATI's generally less consistent driver performance and scaling, and the most common theory I've heard has to do with the way in which they implement driver updates. ATI's driver team has to stick to a very strict schedule of one WHQL certified driver release per month. While consistent driver updates can keep most users happy on the surface, it can also lead to premature driver releases and insufficient performance/stability testing over a wide enough range of configurations.

As a result hotfixes and small patches are sometimes needed by ATI far more often then by Nvidia, who in contrast releases updates according to bug fixes, performance improvements, or feature enhancement. So WHQL driver updates could come every 1-2 weeks or 1-2 months. Neither system is perfect, but in the end Nvidia's driver's do seem to have more consistent performance/scaling across a wider range of games, and with minimal need for hotfixes.
 
Since the AMD/ATI merger, ATI drivers have been notably better then nVidia drivers. I think the problems with ATI performance stem more from its lack of a developer network. As a result you have developers adopting nVidia standards like .cg and PhysX over better standards like .hlsl and Havok.
 
Falchard, quote "Since the AMD/ATI merger, ATI drivers have been notably better then nVidia drivers."

Falchard, perhaps you didn't click on the link within my post. Better check the facts first before posting such non-sense.
 
[citation][nom]campisia[/nom]I for one support Meat81’s post about ATI having poor driver and software abilities/capabilities. A few months ago, I purchased an ATI 5970 and installed the latest WHQL drivers that were out during the time period I had the card (Catalyst 10.2 WHQL). To my surprise, the card could display flickering textures, low FPS during some random instances and no vsync during game play. My current system consisted of Core i7 975 @ 3.33Ghz (no overclock) EVGA Classified X58 motherboard, 12Gig of Corsair 1066Mhz RAM at 9-9-9-24-48 2T timings and two WD VelociRaptor 300Gig hard drives configured for RAID0 with Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition. I completely agree with Meat81’s statement. Due to ATI’s poor ability to still have way too many bugs/issues, I happily took the ATI Saphire 5970 card out and sold the item on Ebay. When Nvidia released the GTX480, I happily purchased the card and am currently using it without incident. I will never buy another ATI product again, I should have learned my lessons from the past but I couldn’t help wait for Nvidia to release a DirectX11 capable product, but this time I will. For anyone attacking someone for the truth, they are the true fanboys and deserve no attention. You can’t tell me ATI and NVIDIA are the same when it comes to bugs/issues, check the ATI Forums and you can see line after line, post after post of complaints/issues. Nvidia has issues, but NOWHERE as near as ATI, and it never will. So… while ATI throws hotfix after hotfix, patch after patch, they will never be as efficient as NVIDIA when it comes to driver support. Ohh, by the way, the only MAJOR issue NVIDIA had was with the fan driver bug, and that was just recently; ATI has had issues year after year and will continue to do so. For those of you ignorant people, here is a link for their superior product, Link http://forums.amd.com/game/categor [...] forumid=11I’ve learned to turn away from such bad products, hopefully others will do the same. beloved patriot Luck…[/citation]


Those ram timings suck. Did you ever think that maybe hardware incompatibility caused your driver problems? Why would you buy an SLI board and then stick a dual GPU Radeon card in it? That is your first mistake right there. You should of bought a GTX 295 instead.

[citation][nom]campisia[/nom]Falchard, quote "Since the AMD/ATI merger, ATI drivers have been notably better then nVidia drivers."Falchard, perhaps you didn't click on the link within my post. Better check the facts first before posting such non-sense.[/citation]

Did you even read his comment? Regardless of who makes a better driver, if it says "The way its meant to be played" then you know its going to run slower on an equivalent Radeon GPU. And you know for a fact that a lot of people had thier PhysX cards turn into paper weights because nVidia said you can't use the product you paid for unless you use our video cards. Which is the exact same thing Sony did with the PS3s and Linux, as an example.
 
What some people don't realize is that these aren't always performance "improvements" overall. In fact, updates like these can often "break" older games - causing them not to run. Personally, I would take stability over performance ANY day of the week. They go by what software/games users are using the most. Rather than appealing to the broad base of users and ensuring that all programs run. You know this is true if you've ever updated a driver and had to fall back on a previous driver due to your favorite game no longer working.
 
[citation][nom]Poisoner[/nom]Did you ever think that maybe hardware incompatibility caused your driver problems? Why would you buy an SLI board and then stick a dual GPU Radeon card in it? That is your first mistake right there. You should of bought a GTX 295 instead.[/citation]
The EVGA X58 Classified is compatible with CrossFire, as are many other X58 motherboards. But even if it weren't, you don't need a CrossFire enabled motherboard to run a dual GPU card like the HD5970, in the same way you don't need an SLI enabled motherboard to run a GTX 295. The necessary bridge chip and PCIe lanes for SLI or CrossFire are included on all ATI and Nvidia dual GPU cards. The Specs he provides for his system aren't very specific, but I don't see any compatibility issues with his configuration.
 
[citation][nom]campisia[/nom]Falchard, quote "Since the AMD/ATI merger, ATI drivers have been notably better then nVidia drivers."Falchard, perhaps you didn't click on the link within my post. Better check the facts first before posting such non-sense.[/citation]

Agreed, dont make statments you cant back up...
 
[citation][nom]ohim[/nom]Get an nvidia 1 GB memory video card , get premiere pro CS5 and CS5 hack and voila real time editing with your new system. Did this on a PII 940 , 8 GB ram , GTX 465 and i got to 5 full HD video tracks with effects and color correction real time. No Quadro bullshit like they advertise. Sadly no option for now for ATI cards .. i really hate my GTX power hungry and lots of heat.[/citation]

You should really look at installing an Aftermarket cooler...I'm in aus so it's close to the end of winter here...Just installed a Gelid ICY Vision aftermarket cooler into my GTX480 and it's running at a rediculously low 35 Degrees celcius under idle and never goes above 55 degrees celcius under gaming load...Only problem with the Gelid is that it's really loud (even tho it's advertised @ 26DBa) and constantly runs at 100% so I'm looking to get a fan control unit to quieten things down...
 
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