[mcg75]

Quote:

In this article we will be assessing driver progress between the AMD and Nvidia WHQL-certified drivers available on the first, and last, day of 2014. To do this we will be using two high-end and two mid-range GPUs from both companies.

Source.

I'm always interested in articles like this. This one wasn't very in depth though.

They only tested 5 games and a synthetic. 1080p only.

For AMD they tested the 290 and 265. For Nvidia it was the 750 Ti and 780 Ti.

The result was a virtual tie in gains from both camps.

 

[Forceman]

I'd be a lot more interested in seeing what kind of gains Maxwell cards (other than the 750Ti) got.

 

[Shogon]

Oh man they used Rome II...driver updates won't raise that sinking barge!

I wonder if there would be a bigger difference at higher resolutions over 1080p, but I'd like to think it would be the same we see here. Few % points if that.

 

[mrawesome421]

2013 was the year I feel most driver improvements came in for my card. But I'll take another ~5% improvement for the year of 2014.

Beats nothing.

 

[Tivan]

Considering that both the Nvidia miracle driver, and the AMD Omega driver, were focusing on getting CPU overhead down, I'd have liked if the test also used settings profiles such as medium, so we could get an idea if real world gains were had for people looking to run a steady 60fps. Or maybe an AMD cpu system. Or a replay of a game of SC2 with 4 players, second half only.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forceman

I'd be a lot more interested in seeing what kind of gains Maxwell cards (other than the 750Ti) got.

Me too, since it has seen great gains, especially with 347.09 recently. Here's a gtx 970 at 1080p from guru3d:

 

[jmcosta]

for those that said "they lowered the kepler's performance..."
*slap*

 

[Cyro999]

They should have tested CPU bound gains too; those were much more significant. No messing around with 5 or 10%, there were 50% gains in some places.

 

[8800GT]

Why didn't they test the 290x? Just a random question but would it not have seen the same gains as the 290 while being a better comparison to the 780 ti?

 

[ZealotKi11er]

They need to do this ago with games post Maxwell launch and see how far GTX780s have fallen.

 

[-iceblade^]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shogon

Oh man they used Rome II...driver updates won't raise that sinking barge!

I wonder if there would be a bigger difference at higher resolutions over 1080p, but I'd like to think it would be the same we see here. Few % points if that.

???

The game is a lot better than at launch, and had driver improvements (at least twice) that boosted performance (337.50 and something before then I can't remember which). Besides, Rome II has been part of Hexus's test suite for at least a year now.

 

[Imglidinhere]

The driver improvements for older cards, like my beyond aged GTX 560M (eeewwww~), are astounding. Since I can run Skyrim maxed out at like... 40-50 FPS easy, it's kinda shocking to see what this card can really pull off. Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is set to max settings and plays at 30-40 FPS too...

 

[SpeedyVT]

Hexus favors NVidia. I would've preferred a real benchmark of the 14.12 and 13.12.

 

[mtcn77]

There is another comparative review conducted by ht4u. As far as I can tell only "Thief" is upgraded in performance compared to the release driver.
[ht4u.net]

 

[SpeedyVT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mtcn77

There is another comparative review conducted by ht4u. As far as I can tell only "Thief" is upgraded in performance compared to the release driver.
[ht4u.net]

Doesn't specify the driver though with exception to 14.12.

 

[Shaded War]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoldenTiger

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forceman

I'd be a lot more interested in seeing what kind of gains Maxwell cards (other than the 750Ti) got.

Me too, since it has seen great gains, especially with 347.09 recently. Here's a gtx 970 at 1080p from guru3d:

Nice find I never knew how much difference there was. By the time I bought my 970, the 347.09 drivers had been released. Looking forward to see how much more power they can squeeze out of these GPUs.

 

[mtcn77]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedyVT

Doesn't specify the driver though with exception to 14.12.

It says 14.7 on the graphics card driver page.
Quote:

AMD Catalyst 14.7 Beta (14.30.1005 Beta2,1)

 

[Silent Scone]

Interesting to reflect over the improvements.