Performance

Crysis Warhead

All three versions of GeForce drivers perform almost identically for dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, except for the slight minimal performance increase in 1920x1200 provided by version 185.85 or 186.18. Things get much more interesting for single-GPU solutions: 185 driver release did in fact increase the average speed in this game. The gain didn’t hit the promised 22%, but in 1920x1200 we got between 14% and 16%, which is also quite good. It is also obvious that GeForce version 186.18 and 185.85 are equal in terms of performance, so there is no rush in upgrading with the new version.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

We have always included this game into the list of our regular benchmarks for the new ATI and Nvidia drivers, because its engine is based on OpenGL API. The built in fps limited can be disabled in the gaming console.

OpenGL 3.0 support appeared back in GeForce 182.08, but we can’t say that the following GeForce driver versions do not affect the performance in Quake Wars. We see pretty big gain by single-processor Nvidia solutions in 1920x1200 resolution: 15% for GeForce GTX 285 and a little below 14% for GeForce GTS 250.

There is again no big difference between 185.85 and 186.18 versions, so you don’t have to hurry and install the latest version, unless you experienced some of the issues described in the release notes and need them fixed. Namely, one of the issues is incorrect forcing of anisotropic filtering from Nvidia control panel.