1/3 Decrease in GPU Result between (Driver 296.16 to Driver 301.42)

[deukalion]

I have a Asus G74SX with Geforce GTX 560M 3GB GDDR.

I reinstalled my computer about three weeks ago with a fresh Windows and installed the latest Asus G74SX Drivers (from the website: Driver 296.16) but then an update came and I downloaded and installed Driver 301.42. I ran benchmark with each drivers, set the Power Options to High Performance so it doesn't reduce anything.

Driver 296.16 - 2012-05-19, High Performance


Driver 301.42 - 2012-05-31, High Performance


See the 28% decrease in GPU results?
What is causing this or is the Asus drivers "optimized" better, but still - how can almost a third of the performance loss be caused by a less optimized driver? About 5% would be another thing. Also, have been noticing some more commonly stuttering in videos and such since the update.

Anyone with any ideas?

[deukalion]

I just reinstalled my drivers and again it shows 1920 in 3D results. So there's defiantly something with the driver...

[David (PassMark)]

It is not unusual for video card drivers to have an effect on 3D performance. Normally performance gets slightly better over time however once a new video card is released.

You could try contacting Asus or nVidia. I would be surprised if you get anything but a canned answer however.

Does this laptop support "Optimus" with 2 video chips?. Maybe the driver decided to switch to the 2nd video chip. See also,
http://www.passmark.com/support/perf...ia_optimus.htm

[deukalion]

There's no Optimus. Asus G74SX doesn't have it at all. Yes, normally drivers can increase performance. But how many times do they reduce performance? I earlier had ASUS older driver (it didn't get updated from ASUS in 6 months or so) and when I finally installed NVidias, the performance went bad. Which is strange... Then a new driver from ASUS came and suddenly, better performance again. Weird.

[David (PassMark)]

It does happen fairly regularly that new bugs are included into video card drivers.

I think their QA process isn't very good, as there hasn't really been a stable bug free video card device driver release for the last decade.