177.79 VS 175.19: Performance improvements!
177.79 is the first 177 driver that not only supports GTX 200 series but also supports 8800 and 9800 series. Finally Nvidia kept their Unified Driver promise.
Because it is the first 177 forceWare of 8800 and 9800 series VGA Card, so we will compare it with 175.19, the last driver update for 9800 and 8800 series. But before we show you numbers, we noticed 177.79 have improved System information in NVIDIA control panel, by providing more information. More lists of improvements and fixed issues can be found here.
System info of 175.19
System info of 177.79
Test setup:
mobo: Maximus II Formula
CPU: E8400 OC 450MHz x9
RAM: G.Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1100
GFX Card: 9800GTX （Stock clock）
But we must point out, Crysis, World in Conflict and Devil May Cry 4 are not a good benchmark because they are not stable. Each time we ran bench they output irregularity FPS. The number in chart is a average score after we ran them ten times but we still not promise the numbers are same to your run.
In lots of games we benched, the new drivers shows solid performance gain, especially in Bioshock, none of the games are showing performance loss. If you are using 8/9 series card, don’t stick to 175 Forceware, update to 177.79!
What’s more, we noticed 177.79 can not make a difference between our 9800GTX and a 9800GTX+.
Funny NV naming scheme
July 31st, 2008 at 7:43 pm
On the last gpu-z screen.If you have a simple gtx that means that the memory/gpu frequencies are not being measured in real-time…
July 31st, 2008 at 7:51 pm
More likely Nvidia finding more ways to cheat on their benchmarks.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:01 pm
why,anon..
a driver does not require any bucks after all…
have improvement is a good thing
July 31st, 2008 at 9:37 pm
hoho,anon might be talking about http://en.expreview.com/2008/07/21/futuremark-refuses-physx-scores-from-hall-of-fame/
the fact that nvidia did a few tricks with it’s PhysX so who knows what they are up to this time.At least that is what i understood.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
You guys are stupid you don’t care about companies you should care about performance in games don’t go pointing the finger to companies let them deal with it.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
The biggest concern is what it does for your computer, Improvements are always in our best interest.