nVidia ForceWare 310.33 Beta - GeForce GTX 680 Gaming Performance
Category : NVIDIA
Published by Christian Ney on 07.11.12
Everytime AMD released a new Catalyst driver we tested it's gaming performance with our Radeon HD 7970. People thought I was an AMD fanboy then as I wasn't doing the same with nVidia drivers. So I took my GeForce GTX 680, downloaded all nVidia drivers I could find and benched them with the same test setup/games as our GPU charts and Catalyst performances articles.
Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
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Test Setup
Hardware
Mainboard |
- ASUS P8P67 Pro (BIOS 2303)
|
CPUs |
- Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4 GHz (Turbo Off / HT On)
|
Memory |
- G.Skill RipjawsZ Dual Channel 4x4GB CL9-9-9-24-DDR3-1600 MHz
|
Graphic Cards (Driver) |
- nVidia GeForce GTX 680 (MSI Twin Frozr)
|
Drivers |
- ForceWare 300.99 Beta
- ForceWare 301.10 WHQL
- ForceWare 301.24 Beta
- ForceWare 301.25 Beta
- ForceWare 301.42 WHQL
- ForceWare 304.48 Beta
- ForceWare 304.79 Beta
- ForceWare 305.53 Beta
- ForceWare 306.02 Beta
- ForceWare 306.23 WHQL
- ForceWare 306.38 Beta
- ForceWare 306.97 WHQL
- ForceWare 310.33 Beta
|
HDD |
- Samsung SSD 830 Series 128 GB
|
PSU
|
- Seasonic Platinum SS-1000XP / 1000 Watts
|
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Benchmarks and Games
Settings
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
(1.0.3)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
- 3DMark Vantage (1.1.0)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
Version |
3.0 |
API |
DirectX 11 |
Tessellation |
Extreme |
Shaders |
High |
Anisotropy |
16x |
Stereo
3D |
Disabled |
Anti-aliasing |
8x |
Full
Screen |
Yes |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Geeks3D TessMark
Version |
0.3.0 |
Map Set |
Set 4 (2048 x 204 |
Tesselation |
Insane (x64) |
Full
Screen |
Yes |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Anti-aliasing |
8x |
Tessellation |
High |
Duration |
60000 (ms) |
Geeks3D FurMark (Burn-in test)
|
|
Version |
1.10.0 |
Full
Screen |
Yes |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Anti-aliasing |
8x MSAA |
Alien vs Predator DX11 Benchmark
|
|
Texture Quality |
Very High |
Shadow Quality |
High |
Hardware Tesselation |
Yes |
Advance Shadow Sampling |
Yes |
Full Srceen Anti-Aliasing Samples |
4x |
Anisotropic Filtering |
16x |
SSAO |
On |
Screen Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Batman: Arkham City Integrated Benchmark
|
|
FullScreen |
Yes |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
V Sync |
No |
Anti-Aliasing |
8x MSAA |
Stereoscopic 3D Status |
No |
DirectX 11 Features |
MVSS And HBAO |
DirectX 11 Tesselation |
High |
Detail Level |
Extreme |
Dynamic Shadow |
Yes |
Motion Blur |
Yes |
Distortion |
Yes |
Lens Flares |
Yes |
Light Shafts |
Yes |
Reflections |
Yes |
Ambient Occlusion |
Yes |
Hardware Accelerated PhysX |
Off |
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
|
|
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
FullScreen |
On |
Vertical Sync |
Off |
Field of view |
70 |
Motion Blur Amount |
Max |
Graphics Quality |
Ultra |
BattleField 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
|
|
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Aspect Ratio |
Wide 16:9 |
Anti-Aliasing |
4x |
Screen Refresh Rate |
60 Hz |
Sync Every Frame |
No |
Shadows |
Yes |
Specular Map |
Yes |
Depth Of Field |
Yes |
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion |
High Quality |
Soften Smoke Edges |
Yes |
Bullet Impacts |
Yes |
Image Quality |
Ultra |
Crysis 2 DX11 + HiRes Texture Pack Benchmark
|
|
Quality |
Ultra |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Anti-Aliasing |
4x |
Map |
Central Park/Adrenaline |
Runs |
1 |
API |
DirectX 11 |
Edge AA |
Edge AA |
Hi-Res Textures |
On |
DIRT 2 Integrated Benchmark
|
|
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Refresh Rate |
60 |
MultiSampling |
8x MSAA |
VSync |
Off |
Aspect Ration |
16:9 |
Details |
Ultra Preset |
Dragon Age II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
|
|
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Full Screen Mode |
Yes |
Renderer |
DirectX 11 |
Vertical Sync |
no |
Graphics Detail |
Very High |
Anti-Aliasing |
8x |
Anisotropic Filtering |
16x |
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion |
Yes |
Diffusion Depth of Field |
Yes |
High Quality Blur |
Yes |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (5 Minutes GamePlay)
|
|
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Aspect Ratio |
Wide 16:9 |
Anti-Aliasing |
8x |
Anisotropic-Filtering |
16x |
Details |
Ultra |
Vertical Sync |
Disabled |
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Benchmark
|
|
Preset |
Ultra |
Renderer |
Enhan. full dyn. lighting (DX11) |
Video Mode |
1920 x 1080 |
MSAA |
4x |
MSAA for A-tested objects |
DX10.0 Style [Standard] |
SSAO Mode |
HDAO |
SSAO Quality |
High |
Use DX10.1 |
No |
Enable Tesselation |
Yes |
Contact Hardening Shadows |
Yes |
StarCraft II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
|
|
Display Mode |
Fullscreen |
Refresh Rate |
Default |
Resolution |
1920 x 1080 |
Vertical Sync |
No |
Texture Quality |
Ultra |
Graphics Quality |
Ultra |
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3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
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Unigine Heaven
TessMark
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Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
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Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCarft 2
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Power Consumption
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Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
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Performance Index
Higher is better
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Conclusion
It's very boring to test nVidia drivers I tell you. AMD drivers are more
fun to test as you don't know what the result will be and have a lot of
surprise. Here you get almost the same value at the end of the benchmark...
Anyway since the GTX 680 has been released one can see from the "Performance
Index" that two drivers out of 13 did bring a performance boost.
From the 300.99 Beta to the 301.42 WHQL performance is the same. After that
there is an increase when you install 304.48 Beta. On average performance goes
up by 2 percent (up to 5 percent under certain games). Then nothing happens
until you install the latest drivers (310.33 Beta). There you can see an average
increse in performance on NVIDIA's Kepler architecture by 3 percent.
nVidia drivers are very constant, the GTX 680 is only 5 % faster with latest
drivers than it was with the first drivers that actually supported this card. Almost perfect drivers
from the beginning? I mean with AMD from the first supported ones to the latest
ones you have a 40 % difference on average.
Now if we take a closer look at the results we got here: upgrading from the
306.97 WHQL to the 310.33 Beta will boost the following games:
- Batman: Arkham City (5 %)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (8.7 %)
- Dragon Age II (5.7 %)
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (6.3 %)
- StarCraft II (6.3 %).
Job well done nVidia!
Author: Christian Ney
c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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