Why dont drivers offer better perf?

Each and every driver i download offers the same performance. not one or the other changes anything for me...no better performance ingame or more marks in 3Dmark06...is this normal? i sweep the remnants of my old drivers all the time with Driver Cleaner Pro.

Why arent drivers helping?

 

Drivers aren't always made to improve performance. Often they are released to improve compatibility and stability. Also, I'd recommend sticking with drivers you can get from Nvidia's website (175.19 currently).

We have reached the end of extreme driver performance improvements for our 8000 series GPUs. They have improved performance a decent 30-40% over the original drivers, and I'm happy with that. (First 3DMark06 I ran was around 3000, now it hovers around 4000). At this point they are focusing on adding features such as CUDA rather than brute performance improvements, especially considering these cards are now 2 generations old.

 

What StormEffect said is exactly correct. These drivers are designed with the idea of "fixing issues", more than increasing performance. (For the most part) It's the 9 Series turn to start seeing some performance increases.

 

Some of them increase performance though not all.

 

yeah a comment i have is that laptopvideo2go.com is currently at 177.35 ur so.....ok after long thot and looking at nvidia's driver section for 8 series cards. well they were at 175.16. ok thats the maker of the 8 series card. how could laptopvideo2go have the 177.35? didnt make any sense .in fact the driver was horrible! i did c a major jump from 3420 to 3651 on 3dmark06. but even non oc'd the driver was horribly unstable and everyone of them rite down to the 175.16 was also unstable even non oc'd! i went back to nvidia's website and saw that they were only at 175.16. ok went back again to laptopvideo2go.com. downloaded 175.16 and its totaly stable. oc'd or non oc'd. heres a BIG hint,.. whatever nvida's at is probably what you should use on a 8 series card......in fact the 177.35 laptopvideo2go has...is for the new 200 series just released .....just so eveyone knows.

 

Remember that a new driver isn't going to turn your GPU into something that it isn't. Once you've reached the cards performance ceiling, there's nothing left to improve.

 

i agree and ocing wont do much more than jusy create more heat and shorten life span of the gpu...hence shorten life span of your nice new laptop