Nvidia RC2 driver speeds here, slows there

SHORTLY after we posted the first review of Nvidia under Vista a new driver came out Luckily the performance is better now, but not always, as the new driver has some new ghosts.

Yet again we tested the driver under Windows Vista RC2 32-bit edition build 5744. Nvidia had a dribbly dream about this one and we saw that it improved some scores, along with the new glitches.

Control panel remains the same, still confusing

We again used the same card, a Leadtek Geforce 7950 GT. We used Nvidia's latest RC 2 driver downloaded from its site. We wrote about that one here. We tested the same games, benchmarks under Windows XP and Windows Vista with the latest drivers and this is what we figured out.

Benchmarketing
We used :
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI motherboard
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometre Windsor core
2x1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA II NCQ hard drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
OCZ GameXStream / 700W / SLI-Ready / Active PFC power supply

Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game3
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	20435	161.9	135.1	117.7
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	17929	151.2	124.6	95.5
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	18382	153.8	126.9	97.5
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	4810.7	12694.9	55.4	259.2
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	4762.1	12355.2	51.6	227.4
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	4800.7	12579.1	52.2	232.0
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	5386	?	?	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	5145	?	?	?
Albatron 7950GT 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	4954	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	2181	17.517	18.836	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	2116	17.161	18.108
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	2105	17.133	17.946
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	2150	19.174	23.822	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	2008	17.875	22.288
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	1839	17.490	19.289
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	2094	0.669	1.048	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	2035	0.643	1.031
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	2040	0.646	1.030
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	129.0	124.2	110.0	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	119.9	110.9	101.2	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	123.2	114.5	99.2	?
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	115.4	88.1	65.7	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	106.3	81.2	61.3	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	100.7	77.1	59.3	?
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	OK 1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz	171.5	163.6	152.0	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	144.5	125.9	121.0	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	97.9	94.9	70.7	?
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	145.5	138.8	111.4	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	124.6	114.3	71.8	?
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	116.0	111.4	99.9	?
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	76.13	57.40	41.51	28.10
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	65.80	64.07	5 9.06	43.13
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	72.13	71.63	70.46	55.73
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	64.93	48.00	34.00	22.67
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	63.50	57.71	49.62	34.11
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	68.16	65.63	49.66	46.83
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	123	95	68	46
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	113	86	61	40
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	118	93	66	43
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Win XP	81	59	40	27
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista	59	41	28	12
Leadtek WinFast PX7950GT TDH 550/1400 MHz Vista new driver	79	56	39	22

Nvidia's new driver scores 400 marks more in 3Dmark03. Windows XP is still the fastest choice and again wins by 2000+ marks. The new driver still lags in performance compared with the Windows XP. ATI's new Vista driver is much closer to its XP performance.

3Dmark06 glitch captured

The driver sets back the 3Dmark06 scores, however, and even renders incorrectly. Nvidia now scores 200 marks fewer than with the previous RC1 drivers and sinks to almost 400 marks down on Windows XP. Shader model 2.0 tests are slightly slower than with RC1 driver but the HDR and Shader model 3.0 tests suffer a lot. They score almost 200 marks fewer and cause the total score performance drop. The CPU runs slightly faster with a new driver.

Doom 3 performance increases from two to four frames with new RC2 driver, and with FSAA and Aniso off it can get even six frames faster.

We ran quake 4 scores at least dozen times as we could not believe our eyes. Nvidia's new driver drops the Quake 4 performance by as much as forty five frames. Nvidia is now almost half the speed of the RC1 driver. A real shocker. The same card runs seventy five percent faster in Windows XP. There is something seriously wrong with the OpenGL but how come Doom 3 scored that well? We are puzzled. Quake 4 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso is slower at 10x7 by seven+ frames, only three at 12x10 and runs significantly faster twenty eight frames or, forty percent faster than RC1 driver.

Serious Sam 2 runs even faster with the new driver. It beats the XP driver and runs almost twice as fast. This is really a puzzle for us too and Croteam still haven't got back to us on that.

It is even faster in Serious Sam 2 4X FSAA and 16X Aniso and at 20x15 runs 106 per cent faster. This is really a wonderful surprise but we would like to know why but Nvidia is still tight lipped, they don't like to talk to us these days.

The new driver increases the performance in FEAR. RC2 driver runs three to seven frames faster or seven and a half per cent faster than RC1 and just two to five frames slower than the XP one. FEAR 4X FSAA and 16X Anisotropic really benefits from a new driver and gets up to twenty frames or thirty four per cent boost. At 20x15 it is eighty three percent faster than the previous driver but still five frames or twenty three percent slower than the XP one.

In Short
The new driver leaves us puzzled. Doom 3, 3Dmark03 and Fear and certainly Serious Sam 2 benefits a lot from the new driver. But 3Dmark06 scores slightly slower and Quake 4 performs catastrophically slower. 3Dmark06 also has some rendering glitches on some tests. It is a step forward in four from six games and applications that we tested but it will have to be better than that.

There is not much time to get things right as the RTM version is expected any day now, it is scheduled for November and we are just ten days away from teh beginning of that month. We will keep our eyes for any change with drivers and performance. We want to know as well. ?

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic

See Also
Windows Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience
Vista RC 2 gaming with Nvidia not there yet
ATI X1950 XTX works well in DirectX under Vista