Performance Review nVidia in 3DMark06

[Prof. Dr. Silver]

Hey Guys,

As I said in my review: Reviewer Tryouts: BFG Tech 8800GTS 640mb OC there was a bit of a performance difference between the 169.01 and the 169.04 drivers from nVidia. Since 169.09 already came out I decided to compare all of them!

Here's the scoop:

169.01 does better than 169.04 (CPU @ 3.0Ghz, GPU @ 702/1782/1080MHz)

169.04 169.09 169.09 @ High performance
Here the processor is running @ 3.3GHz, GPU @ 702/1782/1080MHz, therefore the higher CPU score.

As you can see, setting the 3D performance to high in nVidia Control Panel(as discussed here by Squeetard) brings me only 46 points extra, instead of the promised 500 - 800 point difference! Weird to see though that eventhough the CPU speed(3.3GHz) stayed the same during all tests....there is a 42 points difference in the last test. Does someone know why this is???

Prof. Dr. Silver

[Squeetard]

Hey Doc,

I'll have to run the benches myself to see. I haven't compared the differences between the 'high performance' and 'High quality' since the ti4200 days. Made a big difference back then. The other tweak is to turn off 'allow negative lod bias'. As far as the 42 point difference. You can run the bench 10 times and get 10 different scores, usually within 100 points of each other but every test will vary.

[Prof. Dr. Silver]

Well, I've run many many 3DM06 benchies and usually there is maybe a 20 point difference. I've just never seen a 40+ point difference. But hey? You learn something knew every day!