Nvidia long awaited 337.5

Well, time for testers

Notebook drivers
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/337.50/337.50-notebook-win8-win7-32bit-international-beta.exe32 bit

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/337.50/337.50-notebook-win8-win7-64bit-international-beta.exe64 bit

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/337.50/337.50-win8-win7-winvista-desktop-release-notes.pdf release notes (Wrong ones, hopefully they will fix it. It has been reported)...

I'm waiting for the dell engineer to replace my MB and GPU so mine's not playing right now

 

Good find Micky D, I'll try them later, I'm expecting some decent performance gains!

 

Release notes, Version 334.67...Nvidia...:thumbsup:

 

I hope so!

Since you do the same sort of testing I'd be be very interested in a before/after on Metro LL, BM AO, F1 2012 in-game benchmarks.

I've still got to do my 'before' numbers before upgrading...

Just saw that and it's already been reported. The 'real' one will be inside the install (we hope!).

 

Some testing has been going on over here: Tested: Nvidia's Performance-Boosting GeForce 337.50 Driver and AnandTech | NVIDIA Releases 337.50 Beta Driver, Touts Significant Performance Improvements and Nvidia GeForce 337.50 BETA Released On Monday - Guru 3d

 

Well, these drivers weren't that exciting for me in the end, no real significant performance improvements in comparison to the latest whql driver.

3DMark11 was identical, except a slight increase in the 'Combined' test(CPU & GPU test).

Arkham Origins, Arkham City: no change. (surprised about this one, as was advertised for a big increase)
Metro Last Light: 4% increase in fps, and this is the game that taxes my CPU the most.
Tomb Raider: 2%
Grid 2: 2%
F1 2012: 1%
Bioshock Infinite: 1%

Skyrim quick subjective test didn't notice any improvements, GPU usage still low in some areas.
Titanfall gaming session still locked at 60fps, and still some drops in fps in some areas of some maps to high 40's, low 50's.

The most significant thing I noticed about these drivers is that game loading screens are noticeably shorter, for instance Tomb Raider seems to load the benchmark almost instantly. For me this is the only real positive about this driver, although I can't knock them for small increases in fps on some games, but it's not noticeable. I think if you had a dual core, or a really old Quad Core, then you might see some improvements with this driver, but Sandybridge quad core & up I don't think there are big gains.

 

Thanks for that Robbo .
Disappointing. I've got all my pre-numbers and I will wait until tomorrow as I want to test Experience upgrade (again) - since NV never acknowledged the installer hanging despite numerous reports

 

i wonder if it'll boost titanfall and bf4...will have to try the drivers out.

 

i install it and if it's not an illusion, it boost 4fps in bf4 , in ultra i m between 51 to 69, averrage still for me at 60 with original Vbios dell.

 

yeah, it's hardly noticeable really. i see fps drops when the roof comes down in the baku mission and you're sliding down.

as much as more efficient dx11 drivers are welcomed games still need to be better optimized cos i am running BF4 at 900p on high settings (except for textures which are on ultra and AO is set to SSAO) just to get a decent 50-60fps with adaptive vsync on.

 

i play at 1080p ultra pre-set and i shut off Vsync. Also i see that they put on the shadowPlay

 

675M failed again ...

 

Yup, I'm checking out the new MB and GPU ATM. Was not smooth though. New guy. First after putting it back together it started with no display so he swapped in the old one and that worked. Swapped back in the new one and all is well - almost

Yhe Alienware logo on the panel is no longer lit up. He traced it to one of the cables and I was watching him so he wasn't rough or anything when he dismantled it. Waiting for a new cable now. While on that subject, I had a look at the old GPU/heatsink and the strip of putty across the VR's was gone! That explains the 95+c I was seeing on the VR's



The old one on opening up. One mem strip has stuck to the card but the other piece is not there...

 

i wonder if because my games are on an HDD if that affects the fps? probably not.

 

Trying this driver with my GTX 780m atm. Not really seeing any improvements that live up to the hype. ArmA III, no improvement at all from what I can tell. WoW seems to be running a bit better, but tomorrow is when I'll be able to really put that to the test.

All in all, decent driver so far, but nothing particularly special.

Edit: So did a bit of stress testing in WoW. Definitely seeing a marked improvement in performance, specifically in situations where my fps would normally drop down due to a lot going on around me. Before, my fps would drop from 60fps (where I cap it) to about 25fps. Now, I'm only seeing it drop down to ~40fps. Seems to me this driver isn't so much about improving top end fps, but lifting your bottom end fps when the going gets though. If that is indeed the case, I'll be a happy camper.

 

No, generally that shouldn't make a difference. Where you'll notice a difference is if there is stuttering in open world games that use constant texture streaming (as opposed to level loading) - in these cases an SSD can help prevent that stuttering (games like Skyrim, Batman Arkham City & Origins, Fallout 3, Far Cry 3, etc).

 

Hi all

Well, I went for it this morning. First, 'Experience' is still having issues. I tried the update multiple times but it never managed to get the file - left it all night!

So, I installed the normal way and and I selected upgrade. It all went as expected, all the pauses, screen flashes etc, in the right places .

Now to the meat. I'm very impressed right now .

BM AO, the only disappointment, no change
TR: +6%
Dirt Showdown: +10%
Bio Inf: +10%
Metro LL: +15%
Hitman Ab: +15%

And drum roll please.....
F1 2012 +63%!!!

FYI, al lot of people having the driver fail to load (code 43). Unlikely to see this unless you use VM's or software that relies on them.

Enjoy people

 

Wow, that's so surprising with the performance increases, because I didn't see anything like those increases, especially on F1 2012, where I got an average of 80 fps on the benchmark, it was 79 with the previous driver. I'm wondering if it's anything to do with the speed of the system RAM used. Are you on 1333Mhz RAM? I know F1 2012 is affected by memory RAM speed quite a lot, and I'm wondering if the new driver helps remove that dependancy; also were you on fairly low settings in F1 2012 thereby allowing for say 100fps in the benchmark, thereby making it more CPU dependant? Anecdotal report from someone else with 1333Mhz RAM is reporting good improvements with this new driver too. Perhaps I didn't see much improvement because I have 1866Mhz RAM.

 

I'm trying to get it from GFE but when I click 'download' and the progress bar appears, nothing happens. Download speed stays at zero, bar doesn't move, etc.

Anyone ever had something like this? I know you can get the driver from the website, but I wanted to try GFE.

 

Yeah, I had that as well - shame NV STILL have not got Experience working smoothly.

Yeah, a little confused . I have been looking hard at just why I'm seeing this level of improvement and I think I might have figured it out.

On my last driver V-Sync was always on in most games even though I had it set to off or application controlled. Since I run almost everything at max and then reduce settings aiming for 40-60FPS I never really saw it lock the frame rate. Now it can get over 60fps during the benchmark the improvement shows up larger? I went from 40fps avg to 65fps with ultra settings.

Ram is 1600mhz.

It also looks 'better' but I can't put my finger on it. Kinda like the contrast is higher, I did notice some bright areas looking a little washed out on Dirt

 

Cool, that makes more sense with the F1 2012 result you saw, and the other performance improvements you saw in other games were significant but not outlandish, so that's good, looks like the new driver plays well with Fermi cards - good to see!

 

Not had much chance to do a great deal of testing with the newer driver yet, but on a clean install, 3dMark11 went down a bit. Everything just bog standard run out the box with no changes at all. I noticed (maybe just me) that the tests seemed choppier on the new driver than previously. Also noticed that my cpu didn't turbo up to 3.4Ghz - went to 3.3Ghz instead. I have zero games installed right now. I'm gonna roll back to 335.23 and install some games and bench 'em & repeat with the newer driver.

It's intriguing to see that we're not noticing huge performance gains as advertised by team green, but then again, a select few games were probably hand picked as examples. Anyway, I suppose any slight improvement is welcomed.

 

Will be interesting to see those test results from you Steviejones, I'd imagine you'll end up with similar gains to what I saw.

 

Same results on my end, just slightly lower 3Dmark scores on firestrike but I have not had a chance to do much else yet. I should have a better idea by Saturday as I will have used it more. The drops wasn't big enough for me to be overly concerned about it.

 

My 3dmark scores are almost identical +50.



I linked (mklink) the nvidia cache folder to a ramdisk (Imdisk) just to use the free space left by the ram browsers (9000MB/s)....

Imdisk Tools and utilities for Windows
Task scheduler, User Account 'System', Triggers 'At system startup' , 'Action' both tasks, same order.

Code:

imdisk -a -s [B]1024M[/B] -m J: -p "/fs:NTFS /v:RAMDisk /q /y"

Code:

cmd  /c md J:\NVIDIA Corporation

Task manager, kill explorer.exe and delete (new task) C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\ NVIDIA Corporation

cmd (Admin)

Code:

mklink /D "C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\NVIDIA Corporation" "J:\NVIDIA Corporation"

 

Just an update (thanks J95). NV have released a hotfix version : 337.61

Word is that it contains no fixes or improvements over the current beta. If you use an application that requires hyper-v the driver fails to install. If you do not get a driver error code 43 or are not using the listed Dell monitor then this is not needed.

NVIDIA GeForce R337.61 BETA Hotfix Display Driver Release

Edit: I'm hearing that there may be other changes (undocumented) that seem to be in there so it might be worth a play for you 'tweakers'?

 

i'm not having probs with the 337.50 betas but the hotfixes are very hardware specific it appears.

 

The GeForce R337.61 Hotfix Display Driver is available for download. This driver is being released by NVIDIA as a hotfix driver to resolve the following issues:
• Half display or no display on Dell UltraSharp UP3214Q/UP2414Q LCD monitor - [1453685]
• Code 43 error message after installing driver 337.50 on a PC with Hyper-V enabled - [1495541]


...:laugh:...

KB2919355 packages, KB2934018/ KB2959977 update1, which are not included MSDN Win8.1 update1 ISOs...coincidence.

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...book-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-npt.exe

 

More things to go wrong??? https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ce-display-driver-feedback-thread-4-7-14-/59/

Post #880, probably something else that works best on the latest GPU's

The pessimist in me is getting out

 

Er mah gerd stevie you are back. Welcome back to alienware.