NVIDIA 260.63 Beta Driver Performance Review

Whenever a review of a new graphics card is published, people always seem to hold out some hope that drivers will bring about huge performance increases. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case but it does seem like both NVIDIA and ATI have been making some strides towards noticeable gameplay differences through the effective use of driver updates.

Usually, we don’t publish driver performance articles simply because there really hasn’t been all that much to report and far-reaching claims weren’t made. NVIDIA has bucked this trend by not only releasing new drivers that are supposed to increase framerates but they have thoroughly revamped their installation process as well. Their new 260-series have just been rolled out to the public in Beta form (a WHQL version will be coming shortly) and the changes that are made could have a significant impact upon how consumers look at the Fermi architecture.

Make no mistake about it: this article will be about pre and post 260.63 beta driver performance and nothing more. Since interest for the GTX 460 768MB has recently peaked due to a price reduction to a mere $169, we chose it to benchmark. It is without a doubt one of the best-placed cards currently on the market and it should prove to be a good litmus test for this driver’s performance within the rest of NVIDIA’s current lineup.