Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480: Before And After A Year Of Driver Updates

[acku]

Are you dutiful about keeping your drivers up-to-date? Nvidia does a pretty good job of maintaining a regular release schedule. Today we look at how much performance you can expect from an old card in new games using four driver packages.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480: Before And After A Year Of Driver Updates : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

Heh, now it cooks my steaks 5 secs faster.

Oh wait... I'm using a GT425M on my notebook... Damn!

Cheers!

 

[theyohan]

I hear good things about that new Nvidia 270.51 beta driver.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Impressive results to say the least... well, except for WOW. That has to be a bit of a disappointment for the people who care about that title. But otherwise quite remarkable performance optimizations from the driver team.

I have to agree with the conclusion, due to the recent nature of the Fermi architecture it probably took both Nvidia and developers time to get used to the new hardware. It just wasn't well optimized upon launch. Although I think it's worth noting that it still managed to perform well even on those early drivers.

 

[andy5174]

GTX480/470/465.... Fail

 

[ezodagrom]

In the World of Warcraft page instead of saying "Percent Gain from 197.41 to 266.58" it says "Percent Gain from 9.10 to 11.1". ;P

 

[acku]

In the World of Warcraft page instead of saying "Percent Gain from 197.41 to 266.58" it says "Percent Gain from 9.10 to 11.1". ;P

Oops! My motto: Pobody's Nerfect.

Fixed!

 

[cpy]

257.21 looks best for me as wow player and sc2 player

 

[gofasterstripes]

TBH it looks like good work from the green team. Cool, my 470 is getting bumped for free [and it's already overclocked to 788/1950 ]

On second thoughts, maybe 'cool' is the wrong word.....

 

[Mario75]

[citation][nom]andy5174[/nom]GTX480/470/465.... Fail[/citation]

Nope - trolls actually FAIL.Also your "comment" FAIL

 

[nforce4max]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]only 465 was fail. just like the 5830.[/citation]

Cough 6790

 

[LATTEH]

aww i wish you guys did a left 4 dead bench.. since the source engine is one of the must played engines!

 

[vvhocare5]

hmmm an article about graphics and we dont have someone asking which graphics card is best or which one to buy for their next build??

 

[srgess]

i have the gtx 480 with gelid cooler and i idle at 36 and load 55 degree and decibel lower then my other pc case fan wich are very silent. it only fail cuz of the original nvidia cooling design, if you had a vapor chamber like the 570 on the gtx480 i bet you its gonna be cooler then 570/580

 

[grody]

Quite a lengthy article for a card that TH basically told everyone to skip in favor of the 570/580.

 

[randyzie]

Awh...was hoping the 270 beta would be in here

 

[dgingeri]

I'm sticking with my 260.99 drivers for my dual GTX 470s. the 266.58 drivers have given me no end of problems, with SLi only being enabled sometimes, while the control panel won't even give me the option to enable it other times. Constant quality issues as well. the 266.58 drivers are horrible. Now I find out the newer drivers drive down my performance on my favorite game. Nvidia is really slacking off on driver quality lately.

 

[Ogdin]

[citation][nom]LATTEH[/nom]aww i wish you guys did a left 4 dead bench.. since the source engine is one of the must played engines![/citation]

Ya but a 4 slice toaster can run the source engine at over 100 fps no point in using it here.

 

[travish82]

Great article, but I have one slight bone to pick. Can you explain why you chose to use the 2500K processor? A year ago, that processor wasn't available, so these charts don't really present a real-world situation. I think it would have made a lot more sense if you had used a processor that was in computers a year ago.

 

[17seconds]

It seems like it's always a good idea to at least try out new WHQL and beta drivers, since the trend seems to be progressively improved performance overall. This is another area where Nvidia has an advantage in the fact that there are more driver versions available to download, both official and unofficial ones released by board partners.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocards---NVIDIA-ForceWare-Vista_c32.html

 

[dalta centauri]

[citation][nom]nforce4max[/nom]Cough 6790[/citation]
6790? If it launched in the replacement of the 5830 it wouldn't have been a fail, or even if they launched around the same time. Overall, it appears the 6790 doesn't have the same issues as the 5830 oriignally had (Or still do).
So, it's a fail although it's a fail mainly due to it's release date.

 

[annubiz]

What settings did you use for WoW Cataclysm?
WoW by default doesn't use dx11 but it can use it specifically for performance increase by by adding the following to the config.wtf:
SET gxApi "d3d11"

 

[sirmaster]

Where did they get a 1GB GTX 480?

Every GTX 480 I've seen is 1.5GB.

 

[acku]

[citation][nom]sirmaster[/nom]Where did they get a 1GB GTX 480?Every GTX 480 I've seen is 1.5GB.[/citation]

It's a 1.5 GB. Fixed!

 

[redechelon]

Very cool article. More consumers should be aware of things like this.