nVIDIA GeForce Driver v456.98
then after installing it,
Right click on your desktop then choose nVIDIA Control Panel. Go to Manage 3D Settings from the left pane, then scroll down a bit until you see power management. If you see it's set to OPTIMAL which is the default setting when you install a driver. That's your issue.
Optimal Power means when there is no draw on the screen, the GPU clock speeds is set 0 MHz to save power and then ramps up once it needs to. Sounds great on paper, works like crap. This is the number one reason why anyone might experience crappy performance from their nVIDIA GPU. What's worse, is that's the default setting in the nVIDIA Control Panel after you install a new driver often leading people to blame the driver for bad performance when it's just the fault of nVIDIA's clowns.
Set the power management to Adaptive which puts the GPU at lower clock speeds when no GPU intensive apps are in use and it would ramp the clocks up when needed. That actually works. It's the best balance between getting lower heat from the GPU and good performance in games.
When benchmarking, for the optimal results, it's best to set the power management to High Performance.
Mind you, after you change the power management to whatever you set it to, a reboot is mandatory for the new clock speeds to take effect.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
