We consider Nvidia to be generally more proactive that the competition when it comes to driver and feature support, and that trend seems to continue.
GeForce 337.50 Beta Drivers
Nvidia called for a big press meeting to announce their 337.50 Beta Drivers, it was the first time I was attending a webinar for the launch of a new drivers. It sounds funny, after all, they’re just GPU drivers, but Nvidia seems to be really banking on them, and for good reason.
The 337.50 drivers, as claimed by Nvidia, increase performance of single GPU setups by 64% and SLI by 71%. Huge claims these, one we’re in the process of testing. Nvidia did share their benchmark numbers for both single and SLI setups.
Later, Nvidia stresses on optimising their drivers for optimum DirectX 11 performance. Synthetics shared by Nvidia claim performance benefits of 7 – 16 percent on single GPU performance for DX11 games. They compare their flagship GTX 780Ti’s performance against AMD’s R9 290X. The test bed used is Intel Core i7 3560K at a resolution of 1920×1080.
In multi-GPU configurations, the new driver benefits from improved scaling:
Performance against previous GeForce drivers
Nvidia’s current GeForce driver, version 335.23’s performance has been compared with that of 337.50. Sniper Elite V2 and Total War: Rome 2 have seen performance boosts of about 40 percent with the new driver.
DirectX 12 and Nvidia GPUs
Microsoft’s latest DirectX API was announced this year at GDC. Nvidia claims to have collaborated closely with Microsoft to work on the new DirectX version. DX12 increases CPU/GPU efficiency through better memory management and scheduling and gets developers closer “to the metal.”
Nvidia’s Maxwell, Kepler and Fermi based GPUs have support for DirectX 12. That includes the GTX 7xx lineup. Nvidia goes ahead to claim that 79% of GeForce DX11 owners’ GPUs will support DirectX 12 at launch, compared to 14% support for AMD’s Mantle API.
Nvidia’s “graphics expert” Henry Moreton adds, “Our work with Microsoft on DirectX 12 began more than four years ago with discussions about reducing resource overhead. For the past year, Nvidia has been working closely with the DirectX team to deliver a working design and implementation of DX12 at GDC.”
Epic, the creator behind the largely touted Unreal Engine 4 (and the Unreal Tournament series, if you missed that) also claim to be fully aligned to DirectX 12. “Epic will be working closely with Nvidia and Microsoft to create a world-class implementation of DX12 in UE4.” says Tim Sweeny, the Founder, CEO and Technical Director of Epic Games. “DX12 is a great step forward, exposing low-level hardware functionality through an industry-standard API to give developers more control and efficiency than ever before.”
GeForce Experience
When GeForce Experience first launched it was rather gimmicky, but over the course of time it has grown into an application I use on a regular basis, because of the excellent Nvidia Shadowplay. The install base and game support of GeForce Experience has significantly grown since the release of its first version in May 2013, and Nvidia has shared numbers.
As of April 2014, Nvidia claims that GeForce Experience has had 30 million (3 crore) installs. An year back, the number was just 1 million (10 lakh).
More offerings for notebooks
The new version of GeForce Experience is included in the Beta drivers, and brings in a host of features, especially for notebooks/laptops.
Nvidia Battery Boost, a completely automatic feature included in GeForce Experience boosts notebook battery for “up to 2x longer gaming.” Shadowplay, a feature which allows you to capture you gameplay footage and even broadcast live via Twitch, was severely missed on notebooks, but not anymore. All notebooks featuring GeForce GTX mGPUs have support for Shadowplay now. A sweet move. This makes devices like these almost redundant for Nvidia GPU owners.
The 337.50 Beta Drivers have been released for the public and are available on the GeForce website.
[divider]
On a side note, I think Nvidia is really kicking AMD’s arse left right and centre with its offerings. AMD’s Radeon line-up does have the benefit of being more pocket friendly but the company’s offerings are nowhere close to what Nvidia has. Nvidia has indeed supported GeForce Experience with aggression, contrary to belief an year back when it was inducted, and that has given GeForce owners a definitive edge over Radeon-ers.
[…] the new NVIDIA driver claimed major gains in this game, we were unable to notice much difference. Vegetation Alpha seems to be the bane of […]