Driver Comparison!

For purpose of comparison, I ran 3DMark03 Build 340 at the resolution of 1024 x 768 at the colour depth of 32-bits. The GPU used was the recently reviewed NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 GPU. Let's see if there are any differences in the results...

Just a negligible increase of one 3DMark.

Negligible differences.

Again, more negligible differences.

Virtually no change at all, even in the Pixel Shader 2.0 test.

So, what did we learn from the results above?

Well, for one thing, the Pixel Shader 2.0 "optimization" that NVIDIA put into the Rev. 52.16 driver is still there. The Pixel Shader 2.0 performance of both cards were the same.

And whatever "3DMark03-specific optimizations" NVIDIA put into the Rev. 53.03 certainly did not register with the GeForce FX Go5200. Like Futuremark said, the Rev. 53.03 driver did not meet their guidelines only with certain cards. I guess the Go5200 was not one of them.

But Justin West from Legit Reviews posted this in the Beyond3D forum :-

Ok... my nVidia Ref 5900 Ultra results are in...

52.16 - 5371
53.03 - 6020

On AMD FX-51 system with v-Sync turned off and "Quality" setting in both cases.

Thanks again, all

Ahhh... As you can see, Futuremark was right. The Rev. 53.03 driver really has additional "3DMark03-specific optimizations". A 12.1% boost in 3DMark scores, just from a driver update.