Quite a bit has happened since we took an undeserved rest from driver destruction derbies – Nvidia forged ahead and released a few more Series 182 drivers, introduced the GeForce GTX 275 and, last but not least, it has started to pour with official Series 185 drivers. This type of feast couldn’t be missed so while nobody was looking we captured three drivers and thrown them in the ring for a fair, bare-knuckle fight to earn the change to become our and your new driver of choice. Today, the victims of our guilty pleasure are the GeForce 182.46 beta, the WHQL-certified GeForce 182.50, and the second official Series 185 release, the GeForce 185.66 beta, which adds support for Ambient Occlusion (described here), and is said to bring performance increases between 5 and 45% in games like Call of Duty: World at War, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Crysis: Warhead, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Mirror's Edge. Please note that while we also have both the 185.65 and 185.68 we decided to not include them in this comparison because the former was pulled by Nvidia and replaced with the 185.66, while the latter is just a small update to bring better performance in The Chronicles of Rid****: Assault on Dark Athena, a game that’s not among those used for testing.
As always, to prove their worth, the three drivers will have to surpass several challenges consisting of no less than ten DirectX 9 and 10 synthetic benchmarks and games, including classics like 3DMark Vantage and newbies like Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. and F.E.A.R. 2. More on that though, on page 2 and beyond. All aboard, watch your step.
Page 01: Introduction
Page 02: Test setup
Page 03: 3DMark Vantage
Page 04: Devil May Cry 4
Page 05: Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Page 06: Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason
Page 07: Crysis Warhead
Page 08: Far Cry 2
Page 09: Call of Duty: World at War
Page 10: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Page 11: Mirror’s Edge
Page 12: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Page 13: Conclusion
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