NVidia’s newest ForceWare 185.85 (WHQL Certified) is out, and exPreview takes it for a test drive to see what it improves over the previous version.
In all the 28 minor items, ForceWare 185.85 WHQL outperforms by Version 182.50 in only 10 ones. However, the new driver brings at least 13% improvements under FarCry 2. The improvement even achieves whopping 23.47% under 1920X1200, 4XAA. Besides, the new release brings 1% – 2% improvements under 3DMark Vantage and Call of Duty 5.
So for gaming it seems a decent improvement, but otherwise it might actually hurt performance. They also test the new “Ambient Occlusion” option to add soft-shadows to games, and find a costly 20-40% reduction in framerates.
