Windows 7 doesn't like Nvidia driver changes/rollbacks/upgrades?

koji_m

Ok folks, bear with me here for a while, I've stumbled upon a strange issue and I'ld like to know if any of you encountered it allready.

I'm running a GTX295 (Asus) and I typically use the drivers from the Asus website, for some reason I get the best performance using those.

They recently updated the drivers on the site to 191.07, I dl'ed them, installed and ran a 3dmark06, scores were about 1000points less then 190.45 (what I used for my fresh install when installing windows 7).

190.45 fresh install win7 -> 21700
191.07 upgrade -> 20600

(both drivers are from the Asus website)

Now I started playing Dragon Age a couple days ago and it's a pretty heavy game so I'ld like the best performance from my rig possible, I benchmarked 191.07 again, about the same score. I thought wth, I'll rollback to 190.45. I uninstall my drivers, run drivercleaner in safe mode, have it clean all remaining stuff.

Install 190.45, benchmark it and I get about the same score like 191.07 (20700 something), OK there can be some differences in 3dmark scores but 1000 points is noticeable.

I installed 195.39 beta from the nvidia website, bench it, again I get a score in the same range.

Now here's the deal, when I first installed my windows 7 I ran a 3dmark06 pretty soon and it also scored in that range 20700 something, but after about a week it started going up to 21700. I know this sounds crazy but could it be some issue with win 7 where it takes a while to get max performance out of your drivers?

I dunno, anyone experienced something like this allready on win 7 and doing driverrollback/changes? As in completely incosistent performance with driverreleases that performed good before.

(first post btw, Hi! + I hope this is in the correct section)

Squall Leonhart · 11-07-2009, 03:13 | posts: 916 | Location: Australia | User is Online

1000 points is the error range i've always used, so i've never bothered posting differences ranging from -1000/+1000.

koji_m · 11-07-2009, 03:33 | posts: 2 | Location: Belgium | User is Offline

Yeah I probably shouldn't be worrying too much about it, just thought it was a bit strange.

Cybermancer · 11-07-2009, 15:39 | posts: 12,530 | Location: Cyberspace | User is Offline

Thread moved to:

Videocards - NVIDIA Drivers Section
http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21

sykozis · 11-07-2009, 15:44 | posts: 3,338 | Location: USA | User is Offline

For your system, you really should be using Vantage... 3DMark06 is a CPU bound benchmark.

Squall Leonhart · 11-07-2009, 15:50 | posts: 916 | Location: Australia | User is Online

even vantage is, these days....