Today we are going to take a look at the “top dog” in the marketplace, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, along with the three latest drivers, the 266.58 WHQL, 263.09 WHQL, and 262.99 WHQL. Our goal is to see what performance difference and improvements are available in each driver set, if any. We hope that by the end of this we will have provided you with enough information to choose the best driver available. We will be testing the majority of games/programs listed in the 266.58 release notes and see how they perform, plus a few extra games and synthetic benchmarks to see if the drivers have any effect on them as well. Read on to see how each driver set performs on the GTX 580.
Test System:
- CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @ 4Ghz
- Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Extreme
- RAM: Mushkin Blackline 3×2GB DDR3
- Video Card: ASUS GTX580 (Drivers: 266.58 WHQL, 263.09 WHQL, 262.99 WHQL)
- Power Supply: Antec TPQ 1200W
- Storage: Western Digital black 500GB
- OS: Windows 7 64bit
Release Notes for 266.58 WHQL Drivers:
Supports the newly released GeForce GTX 580 and GeForce GTX 570 GPUs.
Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. the latest Release 260 drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
GeForce GTX 580:
Up to 7% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in Battleforge (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Very High)
Up to 11% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Dirt 2 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Far Cry 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Dark Tower)
Up to 5% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 9% in Stone Giant (SLI 1920×1200, DOF on)
Up to 8% in Unigine Heaven v2.1 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)