NVIDIA Game Ready 347.52 Driver Analysis

Introduction Driver updates, those seemingly pointless notifications at the bottom of your screen that always seem to pop up just as you start a movie or game. Some? Completely pointless, Others? Performance enhancing. Today we're going to take a look at the brand new NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 347.52 and compare this to its most recent comparable driver update; Game Ready Driver 347.25. Using our brand new test bench, we'll be retesting the GeForce GTX 980, GTX 970 and GTX 960 as these three graphics cards were outlined in the release notes. Almost all of the previous generations are included within this driver update also. All information regarding the 347.52 Driver can be found here. This is a chart taken from NVIDIA's driver site, this states NVIDIA's prospected gains among the GTX 900 series. NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 during September 2014 and held out to release their storming, mid range GeForce GTX 960 at the end of January 2015. During our testing with our new test bench, all was completed using the most recent Game Ready Driver 347.25. This came to us as a Day One driver with the GeForce GTX 960 and proved to be a very stable driver update. During our testing, we will only analyse games; generally benchmark software isn't affected by driver updates unless specified. Test Systems and Procedures Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system. Test System Motherboard - Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz RAM - 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Power Supply - BeQuiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive - Crucial M550 512GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Displays - U2868PQU 4K Operating System - Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit Driver Details Games Used Batman Arkham Origins Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Hitman Absolution Metro Last Light Tomb Raider Batman: Arkham Origins "Batman: Arkham Origins is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Warner Bros. Games Montréal and released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 video game consoles. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it follows the 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City and is the third main installment in the Batman: Arkham series. The game, played from a third-person perspective, focuses on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets for combat and exploration. Arkham Origins is the first game in the series with multiplayer capability." From Wikipedia. During our testing, we had some minor issues with Batman, resulting in restarting the software before each benchmark. NVIDIA are aware of this issue and are working to fix it. We can see here that there are some very decent gains to be achieved, the Asus STRIX GTX 960 saw a massive 25% increase at 1080p. Battlefield 4 "Battlefield 4 is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructable environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience. In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad's struggle to find its way home. There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield." From Battlefield.com A similar story here. The GeForce GTX 960 takes the crown again here, 162% increase on average over 3 tests at 4K resolution, simply mind blowing. The GeForce GTX 980 picked up a healthy 15% increase at 4K also. Bioshock Infinite "BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like you’ve never seen. Just ask the judges from E3 2011, where the Irrational Games title won over 85 editorial awards, including the Game Critics Awards’ Best of Show. Set in 1912, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. During their daring escape, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond -- one that lets Booker augment his own abilities with her world-altering control over the environment. Together, they fight from high-speed Sky-Lines, in the streets and houses of Columbia, on giant zeppelins, and in the clouds, all while learning to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, and immersing players in a story that is not only steeped in profound thrills and surprises, but also invests its characters with what Game Informer called “An amazing experience from beginning to end." From Bioshockinfinite.com Some small increases here, most are within our margin of error for variances in testing. Again the GeForce GTX 960 gets a nice 5% and 3% increase at 1080p and 1440p respectively, but a 7% decrease at 4K resolution. Luckily this graphics card isn't aimed at 4K, so most buyers shouldn't see any decreased performance here. Hitman Absolution "Hitman: Absolution is the fifth title in the Hitman series by producer, IO Interactive, published by Square Enix and co-published by Eidos. The game was released for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2012. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine, combining classic Hitman game mechanics with new mechanics." From hitman.wikia.com Here we see the GeForce GTX 980 take a fall at 4K resolution. A huge 21% decrease here, again over an average of 3 tests. We contacted NVIDIA and our results are very poor compared to theirs. We are now working together to source a fix to our problem and this will be updated with any results. Metro Last Light "Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. The game exists in the universe of the novel, Metro 2033, and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Metro:Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the canonical ending from the novel, ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones.Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles." From Wikipedia.org In Metro, we see the demanding game really preventing any noticeable performance changes, 1-2 FPS across the board. Tomb Raider "On 5 March 2013, Square Enix released Tomb Raider, billed as a reboot of the franchise. In Tomb Raider, the player is confronted with a much younger Lara Croft who is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on a mysterious island rife with danger, both natural and human. In contrast to the earlier games Croft is portrayed as vulnerable, acting out of necessity, desperation and sheer survival rather than for a greater cause or personal gain." From Wikipedia.org I was hoping for something special here and NVIDIA delivered. The GeForce GTX 970 pulled a massive 26% increase at 1080p; that's equivalent to 31FPS at this resolution. Final Thoughts So for our final round-up, we have noticed that our benchmarking software saw very little effect from these drivers, the most noticeable scores are listed below. The increased performance from the new drivers: Batman at 1080p saw 20% increase for the GTX 970 and 10% at 1440p; Batman at 1080p provided a 25% and 15% increase for the GTX 960 at 1080p and 1440p respectively; Tomb Raider at 1080p provided a 26% increase for the GTX 970; Battlefied at 4K saw an increase of 14% and 12% for the GTX 980 and GTX 970 respectively. The decreased performance from the new drivers: Hitman at 4K: a huge 21% loss for the GTX 980. We are now working together to source a fix to our problem and this will be updated with any results. We are happy with the results gathered today, some very tasty performance increases for a simple driver install. We did see a few negative performance changes, but these are known issues to NVIDIA and will most likely we targeted within the next driver update. When this driver was released, NVIDIA stated the following: GeForce GTX 980 - 2560x1440 -Metro: Last Light: up to 10% GeForce GTX 970 - 1920x1080 - BioShock Infinite: up to 13% These are NVIDIA's expected gains, which has been attained from their own test system. At both of these resolutions and benchmarks, we saw around 1% increase compared to their 10% and 13%. Even though each test yields a different result, each test has been carried out numerous times and an average taken to ensure no skewed results from a cold graphics card or very high ambient temperatures. On the plus side, there has been some nice increases for the GTX 970 at 1080p, although if you own a GTX 970, you're most likely playing at 1440p or higher, so these increases won't really affect you massively. Battlefield gains a decent 14% and 12% increase for the GTX 980 and GTX 970 respectively at 4K; a very good result for its target consumers. We would like to recommend this driver, WHQL 347.52. It provides a lot of stable performance increases compared to its previous iteration and supports a wide range of graphics cards; a worthwhile installation. Thank you to all our partners who provided the hardware and software that made this driver analysis possible.