NVIDIA is in driver-mania right now, publishing driver week after week, and each one have performance boosts. Now the latest driver is 169.12 beta. We know that 169.12 actually is a 169.09 with 8800GT standby/hibernate mode BSOD problem. Anyway we still want to test 169.12 beta with 163.75.

Our test bed:

Test result:

Final thoughts:

169.12 beta is a surprise beta driver, compare to 163.75 WHQL, in 3DMark06’s four resolution test we find 169.12 have a boost about4%(averange). And in the game there’s more than 4% boosts , the highest one is Bioshock, boost about 26.65%. Even Crysis have 14.4% boost. But there’s a little weird that QUAKE War lost lots of performance.

So, 169.12 beta is a recommended driver for download. But if you are using XP we suggest you use 169.09 Beta because 169.12 beta only have Vista version.

Vista 64bit download

Vista 32bit download