8600m GT Driver and OC Bench Comparison

[Necromas]

I've decided to do some benchmarking and overclocking to get my laptop back up to a more optimal gaming condition after having lately been spoiling myself and low demand source engine games and stuff but now I want to get RE5 so I figure I better make sure I can run it well.

First I tried the 195.62 drivers because they happened to be the ones I was already using, and then I tried the 186.82 drivers my friends have been raving about, and then I installed nTune and did some overclocking from the stock settings of 475Mhz Core/400Mhz Bus to 556Mhz Core/445Mhz Bus. I could probably turn the core clock up further. When I turned the bus clock up higher I experienced a significant FPS drop even though it didn't crash/overheat/artifact or anything like that.

All tests were done consecutively after a fresh boot, having used safe mode and a driver cleaner to uninstall the old drivers and to install the new ones. I ran HWMonitor before doing anything else and left it running until all tests had finished. The temps listed are the highest temp the GPU reached at any given time during all testing.

Full specs:

CPU: Intel C2D 7300 (2.0Ghz)

RAM: 3GB DDR2 @667mhz

GPU: Geforce 8600M GT 256MB GDDR2

HD: 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache

On the second column the percent is the percentage increase over the first column, and on the third column the first percent is the increase over the second column and the second percent is the increase over the first column.

I forgot to record the overall 3DMark06 score for the first test so I didn't record it for the others, but it shouldn't really matter anyways since the CPU scores didn't change.

Going from 195.62 to 186.82 drivers resulted in virtually no change in 3DMark06 and Source engine related tests, but an amazing 16-32% increase in Crysis and RE5 benchmarks.

Overclocking further increased scores across the board by a solid 9-15% with a couple exceptions (that were probably bottlenecking at the CPU) and there were no signs of overheating, instability, or artifacts throughout the whole thing.

Temps didn't really change much even with overclocking. It should be noted that my processor is undervolted (which dropped CPU temp under load by a whopping 14C) which has significantly improved overall cooling, and I do not use any external cooling solutions like a fan or pad.

I think this is a great example of how big of a difference different drivers can make, and how just because you don't see a difference in one benchmark or game does not mean there won't be a large difference in other benches/games. And it's nice to see how the increased 3DMark score from overclocking related pretty closely to how much game performance increased.

Since performing these tests I have tried a few other drivers like 186.81, the latest Dox one, and another 19x driver but 186.82 seem to be the best for me.

Looks like I'm getting RE5 and playing it on high. :)

[Guest zzz]

you forgot write your using display resolution in games.

f.e. my laptop:

1440x900

Dell Inspiron 1520

T7100 (1,8)

2 GB Ram

and GF8600GT 256VRAM

in RE5 with dx10 run in fixed test - 16,2fps (not overclocket)

I used 196.21, 195.62

I think your computer must rum more fps in games while your system is better.

[nvHaku]

Thanks for all the testing you did.

I have a dell 1520, 5250 (1.5ghz), 2gb ddr2, 256mb m8600 gt ddr2. I was looking a new driver for this video last year and stop at dox's 182.05 driver since it give me the best result at the time. However, system was running too hot. So, I when back to dell latest driver. Temp is much better but EE run slower :)

Once again, I'm looking for a new driver for this video card. May I ask a few question of you ...

what version of "driver cleaner" are you using?

Where can I download the util?

I have Revo uninstall util. Are these similar?

What version of ntune did you used and where to download it?

Thanks,

Haku

Edited February 1, 2010 by nvHaku