How much difference do the latest gfx drivers make?

[Digga]

I was wondering, you get all these lovely patches from ATI and nVidia, but how much of a difference do they make to your pc? are they worth the hassle?

Now, i know nvidia make great drivers, better than the custom for the card drivers, i know this from the fact that when i got my geforce 4 (ti4200, still using it now), i ran 3dmark, and then loaded nvidias drivers and tried it again, and was amazed with a score difference of several thousand.

My question is, once you have nvidias drivers on, does updating them to the latest version every release boost performance for the older cards, like my geforce 4, or does it just tweak adjustments for cards like the newest geforce fx? is it worth me getting them or should i stay on the few months old but reliable drivers that i'm using and i know work without any problems?

[Stringy Pete]

New drivers:

Improve performance of newer cards
Resolve compatabililty issues with new games (all cards)
Add new features to the Settings in the Display control panel
Make it look like the Chipset manufacturer is actually doing some work


If you've just bought a card (any card, old or new) I would recommend downloading the latest drivers, as the drivers that come bundled with any card are not usually the newest, and performance gains will be significant.

[ash]

it doesnt always work like that though.

newer drivers can in some cases be slower

[Stringy Pete]

e.g. newer Catalyst drivers with 9800 pro/xt cards provide diminshed performance in Counter Strike.

In newer games, newer drivers will give you increased performance.*




*In 97.3% of cases

[Dom]

new drivers can slow down the system win xp does backup the previsous drivers for such a case..

ATI and nvidia have been known to optomise (spelling?) the drivers specifically for benchmark programs to achieve a higher framerate.

personally i would just stick with what works for you

however if you do want newer drivers wait till they are authenticated by microsoft if using winxp at which point it'll be available on the windowz update site.

[Stringy Pete]

Don't use the windows update drivers, they're older than the most recent ones that you can get direct from the manufacturer.

www.nvidia.com
www.ati.com