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Forceware 91.47

NVIDIA recently updated their reference driver to Forceware 91.47. From our experience, it's definitely an improvement over the earlier, Forceware 91.31. We haven't done a more thorough testing with an SLI setup, but this driver have fixed the bugs we complained about (but not all) with Forceware 91.31. Behavior with FRAPS is much improved, though the blank screen problem still persist with some games (Quake 4 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

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This latest driver marks the introduction of the new NVIDIA logo and Control Panel Interface in a reference driver. Hmm, funny. They've updated their logo in the installer but not on the Control Panel. Our experience with the new driver panel interface is, well, interesting. The new panel does make things a little bit simpler and more easy to use for less technically inclined users, but power users will likely be annoyed with the response time. They will also more likely be annoyed that some settings, like SLI, core temperature log options and video enhancements are only available on the new control panel and not the old one. Another concern for those of us who like to tweak the settings are the absence of a 'Reset to Default' button in the new control panel, though they're still present on the old.  Another 'behavior' we don't like with the new control panel is the stubbornness to apply Trilinear optimization the first time it is enabled (though it was disabled in the old control panel).

Some may consider ATI's Catalyst Control Center is the better interface and we agree. However, NVIDIA still find it in their hearts to supply old time users the old, familiar Control Panel without a driver mod or a separate download. Hopefully, they will continue to do so and fix the trivial issues we mentioned.

Heat and Noise

Though we're not completely sure, it would seem the new GeForce 7950GT has a slightly higher temperature than a higher clocked GeForce 7900GT. During our testing, we saw core temperature on the higher clocked GeForce 7900GT goes from 56° Celsius on idle to 62° Celsius on full load. Meanwhile, the GeForce 7950GT goes from 62° Celsius on idle to 68° Celsius on full load. Our version of RivaTuner is not able to monitor the temperature levels of the GeForce 7950GT and 7900GT with the new Forceware 91.47 drivers, so we will be investigating this issue further when we write our GeForce 7950GT round up.

Noise levels are generally the same, though it seems the GeForce 7900GS is a little bit 'noisier'. We could definitely hear the fan at high speed when playing games, even with a headphone attach to our ear. Mind you, our test setup is an open case environment, so the noise we heard shouldn't be much of a problem for users with a closed case.

Performance

As usual, we'll be focusing on performance under default settings and with 4x AA and 16x AF. Anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering are applied from the in-game menu settings (or console) whenever possible. V-sync was disabled on both the driver panel and within the game, if present. The settings we used for each game are pretty much the same as our usual test settings. F.E.A.R was set to 'Maximum' quality (for both graphics and computer settings) but with Soft Shadows turned off to allow performance testing with AA. Quake 4 was set to 'High Quality' and Serious Sam II was set to its 'Maximum' video options preset but we used custom resolutions, AA and AF settings for both of these games.

Due to a misconfiguration in our part, we messed up the results for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. As soon as we can, we will update the results. 

We'd like to thank Leadtek for supplying the GeForce 7950GT and 7900GS and Tagan for supplying the additional power supply for this article.

Our test setup
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
2 x 1024 MB Kingston KVR 3-3-3 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM
MSI K8N NForce 4 SLI motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
ASUS E-616 DVD-ROM
Tagan TG530-U15 530 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
NVIDIA Forceware 91.47 reference driver
NVIDIA NForce 4 6.66 reference driver
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24 bit 5.12.1.512 driver.
DirectX 9.0c

The graphs are pretty self explanatory, but in case you can't see the text, they're arranged in groups of three colors: green for minimum fps, blue for average fps and red for maximum fps. The first group represent test results under default settings, and the second represent results with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled. For High Dynamic Range (HDR) Rendering, the second group represents results with HDR enabled. These results are in frame rate per second.

The results:

Not surprisingly, the performance of both GeForce 7900GS and 7950GT is similar to the reference clocked GeForce 7900GT and higher clocked 7900GT, respectively. So the two sits really well as a replacement for the GeForce 7900GT series. With its slightly higher clock, the GeForce 7950GT offers roughly 2 to 3 fps higher performance than the ASUS EN7900GT TOP we used to represent the higher clocked GeForce 7900GT. As you can see, the difference is not at all noticeable in gameplay or even significant. At 1280 x 960 with AA and AF, the reference clocked GeForce 7950GT can still drop to below 30 fps in some situations, while at 1600 x 1200, both the higher clocked GeForce 7900GT.and 7950GT are practically the same, though the latter comes with more memory.

Variations between runs does complicate things, but it seems the GeForce 7900GS generally has higher minimum frame rates than the standard GeForce 7900GT. From the average fps, the GeForce 7900GT is overall the better card of the two, no doubt due to its number of pixel pipelines. The two are evenly matched, just like the GeForce 7950GT and the higher clocked GeForce 7900GT.

Due to our experience when writing the 'Benchmarking on Trial' article, we decided to add results from gameplay testing sessions for this article. The purpose is simple - to see what these cards have to offer in situations as close to real world situations  as possible. From our experience, results with this kind of testing tend to be lower than results from the F.E.A.R Performance Test. Here are they are - we've separated the first and second part of Afterimage to make the graphs easier to see.

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