NVIDIA Forceware 66.60 Benched

[Electronic Punk]

Ran a few tests on these drivers I got last night.
They will not be distributed.

All tested on a stock Athlon64 3400+ on an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra running at 461/1170

61.77 were the last non-WHQL released drivers on the NVIDIA homepage with 61.76 (untested) being the last WHQL. 66.02 was never made publically available and to my knowledge 66.60 never will be, tho I have had no issues with stability. No artifacts were seen on any of the tests and 461/1170 was the optimal range to overclock according to the NVIDIA drivers themselves with coolbits enabled.

3DMark 2001

61.77 - 23696
66.02 - 23011
66.60 - 23154

After a slight performance decrease with the 66.02 drivers after the 61.77 drivers, it was nice to see a slight increase in points. 3DMark 2001 is becoming more and more unsuitable as a benchmark. When 2005 is released this week I don't think we will see many big sites using 3DMark 2001 anymore.

3DMark 2003

61.77 - 12584
66.02 - 13046
66.60 - 13172

A moderate performance increase between 61.77 and 66.02 is improved on in 66.60.

 

[Electronic Punk]

Hopefully this screenshot should help illustrate my point that 3DMark 2001 SE is now useless.

Here is my card the Geforce 6800 Ultra (light) compared with the ATI 9800 Pro (dark)

The gaming tests (1 to 3) indicate that the 9800 is faster in five out of the six tests, but I belive this is more of a CPU limit, (for ref. my Athlon64 vs Pentium4), rather than a graphical limit. The nature test is a little more intense and the gf6 still doesn't have to worry and then wipes the floor with the 9800 pro for the rest of the tests... however 3dmark score is only dependant on the first seven tests... so the 9800 Pro ends up with a higher 3DMark 2001 SE score than the NVIDIA Geforce 6 Ultra.

 

[Dublex]

That isn't suprising as the 2001 edition is three years old.

Do you know how the results compare in game tests?

 

[fantasi]

up with one and down with the other...haiz stil lwanting the best set of driver...like the good old 44.30 i think i was...lol

 

[Electronic Punk]

Well these days, 3dmark 2001 is not such a good indicator of how it will run.
To be honest, playing the games is - most have built in benchmark tools.