More Controversy Surrounding Nvidia's New Drivers

[MetroP]

NVIDIA's GeForce 337.50 Driver was said to address performance when running DirectX 11-based software. Now that it is out, multiple sources are claiming the vendor-supplied benchmarks are exaggerated or simply untrue.

ExtremeTech compiled benchmarks from Anandtech and BlackHoleTec.

Going alphabetically, Anandtech tested the R337.50 and R331.xx drivers with a GeForce GTX 780 Ti, finding a double-digit increase with BioShock: Infinite and Metro: Last Light and basically zero improvement for GRID 2, Rome II, Crysis: Warhead, Crysis 3, and Company of Heroes 2. Adding a second GTX 780 Ti into the mix helped matters, seeing a 76% increase in Rome II and about 9% in most of the other titles.

BlackHoleTec is next. Testing the mid-range, but overclocked GeForce 760 between R337.50 and R335.23 drivers, they found slight improvements (1-3 FPS), except for Battlefield 4 and Skyrim (the latter is not DX11 to be fair) which noticed a slight reduction in performance (about 1 FPS).

ExtremeTech, finally, published one benchmark but it did not compare between drivers. All it really shows is CPU scaling in AMD GPUs.

Unfortunately, I do not have any benchmarks to present of my own because I am not a GPU reviewer nor do I have a GPU testbed. Ironically, the launch of the Radeon R9 295 X2 video card might have lessened that number of benchmarks available for NVIDIA's driver, who knows?

If it is true, and R337.50 does basically nothing in a setup with one GPU, I am not exactly sure what NVIDIA was hoping to accomplish. Of course someone was going to test it and publish their results. The point of the driver update was apparently to show how having a close relationship with Microsoft can lead you to better PC gaming products now and in the future. That can really only be the story if you have something to show. Now, at least I expect, we will probably see more positive commentary about Mantle - at least when people are not talking about DirectX 12.

If you own a GeForce card, I would still install the new driver though, especially if you have an SLi configuration. Scaling to a second GPU does see measurable improvements with Release 337.50. Even for a single-card configuration, it certainly should not hurt anything.

 

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Some-NVIDIA-R33750-Driver-Controversy

HardOCP has also witnessed some unusual behavior on the GTX 780 Ti where it's boosting to higher clock speeds with the new driver suggesting that the performance gains are coming directly from an overclock applied by the new drivers.

The observed clock speed also seemed slightly higher than we've experienced before, 1019MHz sustained clock speed on the GTX 780 Ti's while gaming. In the past, we have seen about 1006MHz clock speeds on these cards. This new 337.50 driver may have changed the thermal profile slightly to allow slightly higher clock speeds.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/04/08/amd_radeon_r9_295x2_video_card_review/12#.U0UWclfDDTc

 

 

 

 

 

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[Paralectic]

We need automatic overclocking for our cards.

[GRJohn]

Nvidia users like me hear about Mantle everywhere but we have to wait until the end of 2015 to get something equivalent(in reality to get Mantle with a name that Nvidia accepts, DIRECTX12).

But before DX12 we are going to see more than a dozen top titles with Mantle support. So Nvidia started this campaign about a "Wonder" driver promising to give almost Mantle performance in setups with Nvidia cards under DX11. The whole idea was to make us feel better about their hardware.

This marketing comedy is going to continue in my opinion at least until DX12 comes out. Typical driver updates are going to be marketed as the second coming and typical game optimizations that give performance gains in specific games and/or under specific circumstances, things that we are all used to, as something never seen before, worst as a proof that DX11 is "better" than Mantle.

PS And of course all these slides about the new drivers will use a 12 threads Intel cpu monster to prove that cpu bottlenecks are easily bypassed (LOL) with clever programming and without the need of another API(that's until DX12 comes out. At that time marketing will do a U turn and will start telling us how important is the new API is.

[Ashaira]

Well in their defense it is still BETA. If the same happens when the official one gets released then yes. You have my permission to tear them a new one.

[Fetzie]

nVidia marketing saying untrue or inaccurate things about their own products and how they compare to the competition? Colour me surprised.

 

The big improvements are in line with a working SLI profile being published for a game that previously didn't have one. Otherwise, the improvements are in line with pretty much every driver release in recorded history - i.e. nothing special.

[Curemylife]

We need automatic overclocking for our cards.

Yes, that's called GPU-boost, or you can do it the best way, yourself.

 

It's the same as with CPU's, there's automatic overclocking but it's total crap.

[Scionyde]

Marketing people absolutely love the phrase "Up to", if they can find a single ideal case, they'll trumpet that one number and cover their asses with "up to".

 

To be fair though, we kinda saw something similar from marketing people with Mantle performance numbers.

[Exotath]

People are complaining about improved thermal profiles that allow the card to run at a higher frequency and in turn more performance???

 

Wow.

[Victorious Secret]

People are complaining about improved thermal profiles that allow the card to run at a higher frequency and in turn more performance???

 

Wow.

 

Don't you know? It is policy to bitch about free performance these days. Even if that performance is coming from sensible areas, you should still bitch about it.

[dragosudeki]

Why don't they just allow more freedom for Nvidia cards in terms of OCing?

[acidydragon]

I don't see the issue?

It's in Beta, so it could still improve,

and it's still a performance bump.

 

Essentially what I'm saying is:

Get over it.

It's still a performance boost, and it's still free.

[Warcony]

I don't get everyone's issues over this driver?  They released an update and generally speaking, performance is slightly better... performance that was not there when you purchased your card so free performance, why complain?  As a SLI user, I've noticed greater improvement in some games, so they obviously worked on improving SLI performance which makes me

 

Also Nvidia didn't hype this driver up, people hyped the driver up.  Same thing happened with Mantle, the S5 and will continue to happen with products.

[jezza39]

I don't see the issue?

It's in Beta, so it could still improve,

and it's still a performance bump.

 

Essentially what I'm saying is:

Get over it.

It's still a performance boost, and it's still free.

 

The problem people have is the huge hyping (there's a thread calling them wonder drivers etc.), and the huge numbers touted by NVidia and we got nowhere near what was expected. 

[kuddlesworth9419]

They did admit in the Driver notes that the thermal profile for the 750Ti and 780Ti and some other GPU's has been increased. Probably because the GPU's can handle a bit more heat.

[acidydragon]

The problem people have is the huge hyping (there's a thread calling them wonder drivers etc.), and the huge numbers touted by NVidia and we got nowhere near what was expected. 

This happens all the time... Like, it really does.

Boxes of products make claims that are impossible to reach,

such as noise levels, that are always half of what they really are.

 

It's normal, and honestly should have been expected.

[Ashaira]

They did admit in the Driver notes that the thermal profile for the 750Ti and 780Ti and some other GPU's has been increased. Probably because the GPU's can handle a bit more heat.

 

Which means shit for most of us as we already push our cards to their thermal limit by OC. Especially since warranties cover the base OC that NVIDIA allows with the limited 75mV and 106% TDP

[Katness Everdeen]

All of this marketing bullcrap makes me sick to my stomach Nvidia should have learned their lesson by now.

[LAwLz]

Well that's a shame. Would have been better if the performance increase came from purely better optimization.

If it is in the notes for the drivers then I don't really see this as "lying" though. As for the whole "baww it should have been better!" crowd, marketing people and the hype train always likes to push claims to the limit which is why you should pretty much always ignore both of them. Just wait until it's out and then compare what different websites says about it. Keep expectations as low as possible. It's better to have low expectations and then be gladly surprised, than to have high expectations which are not met.

[MattDaemontools]

People are complaining about improved thermal profiles that allow the card to run at a higher frequency and in turn more performance???

 

Wow.

Claiming better performance through optimizations and then overclocking the cards to reach those performance targets instead is basically cheating. The game isn't running faster because you optimized it, the game's running faster because you applied higher clock speeds.

 

[Xorbot]

People are complaining ... ???

 

Wow.

 

Yep.  They are.  Welcome to the Internet.

[Askew]

I haven't even installed this thing yet, just gonna wait for the WHQL as usual and see what difference if any it makes for my system.

[Exotath]

So you're saying in order to show gains they decided to manipulate gains through a means that is already random from card to card? (Thermal profiles/ GPU Boost). Sounds lock-tight and smart to me!

 

[ajoy39]

Well in their defense it is still BETA. If the same happens when the official one gets released then yes. You have my permission to tear them a new one.

The driver was advertised to provide a huge performance boost, including the beta release. Turns out their claims only stacked up with one game, in SLI, and it only increased by that much because SLI completely did not work before. 

[dmegatool]

The driver was advertised to provide a huge performance boost, including the beta release. Turns out their claims only stacked up with one game, in SLI, and it only increased by that much because SLI completely did not work before. 

One game ? Elric seems to think otherwise...

I'll reserve judgement 'till I test it myself.

[paras]

I hope the drivers delivers