Hello together,

i normally use the latest versions of the Nvidia drivers on Win 7 pro 64 bit (was 364.51), but i always had the impression, with every newer version the performance goes more south. Now, just for the sake of it, i installed version 337.88 back again and guess what, the performance (and RAC) is rising, although there are no APs to beef up the credits.

What is your observation/experience/opinion on that?

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Aloha, Uli

At some point around 337 the drivers started to use 64 bit addressing using two 32 bit registers to represent an address to support more than 4 Gb of memory. That hurts performance. All address calculations need two additions and/or multiplications with carry bit(s).

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To overcome Heisenbergs:
"You can't always get what you want / but if you try sometimes you just might find / you get what you need." -- Rolling Stones

Ok, that maybe one explanation, but why is it constantly further degrading?
For example the last update 364.51 took a big hit performance wise against its predecessor version 361.91. That was the main cause, i tried an older driver again and was pleasantly surprised. I first thought, my computer is getting too old... ;)

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Aloha, Uli

This is good info to know, I usually upgrade drivers regularly, probably 15-30 days after release, just to let the bugs shake out first by the early adopters, and it seems to be a good plan, as Nvidia just pulled one of their latest. Is it wise or even possible to use the 337 drivers on 64 bit Win 7 systems with 7 & 9 series cards? I don't game on this computer at this time, just general computing and such. And SETI, of course.

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This is good info to know, I usually upgrade drivers regularly, probably 15-30 days after release, just to let the bugs shake out first by the early adopters, and it seems to be a good plan, as Nvidia just pulled one of their latest. Is it wise or even possible to use the 337 drivers on 64 bit Win 7 systems with 7 & 9 series cards? I don't game on this computer at this time, just general computing and such. And SETI, of course.

Just look at the drivers listed for the card/OS on http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us - the search tool won't list incompatible drivers (basically, drivers older than the launch date of the card itself).

Your GTX 950 starts at driver 355.69
I don't see any 7-series on your account, but your GTX 670 can go back as least as far as driver 306.02 (if you select Beta drivers - the search results are limited to a maximum of 20 at a time).

I was just looking at drivers to use with the EVGA 750 Ti FTW I got this week. I looked over the top hosts and found they were all using driver newer than 337.88. Which makes me think if there is a performance hit with newer drivers. Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

I'm probably going to go with 362.00 for Win7 64-bit in either my i7-860 or one of my i5-4670K hosts.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

Yep, gamers bring the money. :(

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Yep, gamers bring the money.

And that helps keep up the development of more powerful GPUs and makes them affordable.

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True that.

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Yep, gamers bring the money.

And that helps keep up the development of more powerful GPUs and makes them affordable.

...and to further force the gamers to buy new equipment, the older GPUs have to perform even less, so the performance hit in newer drivers - now everything suddenly makes sense!


>;)

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Aloha, Uli

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

I am not a top cruncher and I cannot speak for everyone, but for me I assumed newer is better with improved performance and more bug fixes. Silly me. Now that I have been shown the error of my ways, I am trying an older driver.

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

I am not a top cruncher and I cannot speak for everyone, but for me I assumed newer is better with improved performance and more bug fixes. Silly me. Now that I have been shown the error of my ways, I am trying an older driver.

I plan to do my own testing. Because who knows what variables may be in play that cause one drivers to be faster or slower on any given system. Had you not made a post I wouldn't even have grabbed 337.88. As it is beyond the limit of 20 that Nvidia displays, but is still active if you ask "the google" where Nvidia has hidden it.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

I am not a top cruncher and I cannot speak for everyone, but for me I assumed newer is better with improved performance and more bug fixes. Silly me. Now that I have been shown the error of my ways, I am trying an older driver.

I plan to do my own testing. Because who knows what variables may be in play that cause one drivers to be faster or slower on any given system. Had you not made a post I wouldn't even have grabbed 337.88. As it is beyond the limit of 20 that Nvidia displays, but is still active if you ask "the google" where Nvidia has hidden it.

I hope you will share your findings. :)

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

I am not a top cruncher and I cannot speak for everyone, but for me I assumed newer is better with improved performance and more bug fixes. Silly me. Now that I have been shown the error of my ways, I am trying an older driver.

I plan to do my own testing. Because who knows what variables may be in play that cause one drivers to be faster or slower on any given system. Had you not made a post I wouldn't even have grabbed 337.88. As it is beyond the limit of 20 that Nvidia displays, but is still active if you ask "the google" where Nvidia has hidden it.

I hope you will share your findings. :)

No one shall ever know my secrets!

I should be able to toss the results of offline test runs into a table for each driver I use. Along with all of the system info & various settings.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Then there must be some other advantage to using the newer drivers.

Game support.
99% of driver updates are for game support/game bug fixes. The other 1% is for new hardware or OS support.

I was thinking more as to why the top crunchers are using the newer drivers. Many of them are dedicated 24/7 crunching hosts. So if the newer drivers are slower why would they be using them.

I am not a top cruncher and I cannot speak for everyone, but for me I assumed newer is better with improved performance and more bug fixes. Silly me. Now that I have been shown the error of my ways, I am trying an older driver.

I plan to do my own testing. Because who knows what variables may be in play that cause one drivers to be faster or slower on any given system. Had you not made a post I wouldn't even have grabbed 337.88. As it is beyond the limit of 20 that Nvidia displays, but is still active if you ask "the google" where Nvidia has hidden it.

I hope you will share your findings. :)

No one shall ever know my secrets!

I should be able to toss the results of offline test runs into a table for each driver I use. Along with all of the system info & various settings.

Both DX12 and Vulkan/Mantle exist because of this ongoing driver bloat, where both main GPU vendors keep patching their drivers for badly written games. This drives up the latency by version over time, which for the special case of VR adds unacceptable nausea inducing lag.

For number crunching on Cuda, it means elaborate streaming mechanisms (like in Petri's optimisations) to hide latency, for which the usefulness is limited before GTX780 (Big Kepler).

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.