With driver or OC'ing, how much better performance can 8800GTX get relative to defaults?

Firing up the System Info in NVidia Control Panel, I can see that..

Foreware is 167.46
Video BIOS: 62.92.23.00.14

If I went to a newer and more aggressive driver, how much more performance would I get? (the threads about drivers tend to be so huge and full of info and misinformation I get lost keeping up

With a software-OC (which I understand is highly unreliable with 8800GTX and M570RU's), how much performane %age can you get?

And finally, if you flash a new vbios, how much %age can you get?

Seems to me like I need to upgrade my driver, but Crom knows which would be the one to go to ... but vbios is a little risky, and least gain?

jeff

 

check my sig.

 

The performance difference between decent drivers is quite small. I've never seen more than a 100 point difference in 3DMark06, for example (less than 1%). The change in game FPS is usually inconsequential (one or two FPS) unless the game and driver simply don't match, something I haven't run into yet.

In my opinion, the keys to driver selection are stability, and rendering quality.

 

Some drivers give you higher 3d mark scores, with stock i got 9400 something with some beta i got in the 8800ss some i got in 9600 different with every driver, but in game performance is what matters.

 

I reccomendstarting by putting somthing like the 175.75 drivers on, these gave me a bit of a performance boost. It will also allow you to play with ntune to try out overclocking.
I will say that it is not great, I gave in and refashed the bios. I wa given lots of advice on the forum, so PM me if you need any!!

 

I tried 175.75 long time ago, and it won't let me OC through software.

 

So if you reflash the vBIOS, how much %age improvement does that net you, relative to driver updates?

ie: Driver updates == tiny %age increase.. vbios==?

jeff

 

holy crap! Thought I'd grab 3d mark 06 just to see what my score is.. 257MB download? For a benchmark? Seriously wtf are they doing in there that needs that much space?

jeff

 

Um, how about rendering large scenes with high resolution textures, complex coding, and lots of high end effects, to name a few? What were you expecting? Vista System Assessment Tool?

I'm running 177.41 and have seen my best performance with these drivers. 3D Mark scores actually went down, but in game things are much smoother.

Reflashing the vBIOS with the latest BIOS revision, and clocking up with a 1.05v setting, you'll see a far, far higher result than just upgrading drivers. Were talking over 1000 points in 3D Mark.

 

Emike is right.
I went from about 8500 to 10300 on 3dmark with a bios flash to new clock settings.
Bit scary but with is help it all worked nice. Woking on a simple batch file thing to make it easier in the future as well hehe

As for 3dmark, it is a big DL, but when you watch what it does, you can see why!!

 

When I run 3dmark 06, the 'unsigned' warning comes up.. I hit Run and nothing.

I'll update drivers anyway ( was hoping to bench before and after), and see how things go; any good guide on how to do the vbios update? (I'm assmning we're cranking up the voltage just a touch here and setting a few clocks; is there any risk, or we talking such a low voltup that its just a couple degrees of heat?)

jeff

 

vBIOS is only bumping the voltage up .05volts, so not a big difference. It will increase the heat up to 10C though. I think most people have just been PMing for vBIOS OC help.

Are you running Vista? I know I have to download and install the latest version of openAL for 3DMark06 to run.