VR-Zone

Just recently, a new beta driver for Nvidia was released, Forceware 186.08. It adds support for ambient occlusion, a new control panel feature for those looking for enhanced 3D gaming realism. We shall see if there is any performance increase by running several benchmarks to compare with Forceware 185.85.

We ran a total of nine benchmarks with resolutions from 1680 x 1050 to 2560 x 1600 with varying AA settings in order not to miss out anything.

1. 3DMark Vantage
2. Crysis Warhead
3. Far Cry 2
4. Mirror's Edge
5. Left 4 Dead
6. H.A.W.X
7. Fallout 3
8. Deadspace
9. Call of Duty: World at War

Similar to the previous Catalyst 9.4 and 9.5 drivers comparison, our Fallout 3 and Deadspace tests are done using manual walkthrough in the game itself and average FPS recorded using FRAPS. COD 5 was benched in a similar way except that the FPS were recorded during a fire fight instead of a standardised walkthrough. Needless to say, all results shown here are the average scores as we carried out numerous tests in order to ensure our results are accurate.

Benchmarks were ran with a stock Core i7 965 processor, Foxconn Blood Rage, 3 x 2GB Adata rams and Nvidia GTX 280 1GB.

We see little improvement in 3DMark Vantage, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 but quite an improvement in FPS of Crysis Warhead 2560 x 1600 4xAA. The new driver 186.08 also showed some improvement in Mirror's Edge, Left for Dead and Call of Duty: World at War. The greatest improvement in performance goes to H.A.W.X with AA enabled. Surprisingly, we see a noticeable drop in FPS in Fallout 3 and Deadspace. Hence, in general, we can see that Nvidia Forceware 186.08 does improves performance by a little. For H.A.W.X fans out there, you should not hesitate and get the 186.08 up and running provided you play in AA settings of course.