Which Driver?

[AirPower4ever]

So I have been hanging around the SATA areas on the web. One thing started to jump out at me was that using Intel RST, certain drivers gave different performances. Then certain drivers belong to certain chipsets since they are optimized for that chipset.

Example, I get better write performance using certain Intel RST drivers (mainly version 11's) rather than if I used some of the version 12's on my particular board.

I got to thinking, is there one place (a website) that specializes in video card drivers and which ones work better with which cards. I read somewhere (cannot find it again) that the Nvidia 331.xx drivers were specifically for the 700 series. Is there some sort of table that says "355.xx work better with 980's while 353.xx work better with 960's and 970's? Not just from a gaming stand point, but as an overall?

I am not sure, but thought I would throw this out there to see if something like this exists.

 

[Rizen]

The 900 series are all based on Maxwell so it's likely that the performance of the 960, 970, 980, and 980 Ti is best on whatever the newest driver is.

The 700-series "might" be better off on older drivers, but personally I always just install the newest stable driver on my PCs (on my main gaming PC I'll usually run the betas unless there is a glaring problem that I want to avoid).

I am not aware of any site that regularly tests for these things, unfortunately. Doing this exact testing on S3 drivers back in 2000-2001 is how I got into the PC hardware scene. I would be curious to see what it's like nowadays - AMD specifically seems to have boosted performance on the 290/390 series since launch with driver improvements.

 

[polonyc2]

there were some rumors of recent drivers gimping performance in Kepler cards but apparently Nvidia added some Kepler optimizations in a recent driver...me personally I always go for the latest driver, although I don't update every time a new driver is released

 

[AirPower4ever]

I do the same, I habitually update to the latest, but started to question if there is such a thing; a better driver for certain generations of video cards. Just seemed like other computer hardware goes that way so why not video cards. Wireless adapters I have found in the same boat; certain drivers work better than other versions released.

I just read some posts last night and back when 355.60 came out, people got poor performance and so then went back to 353.62. Got me wondering about this, but when reading more on this on other sites there does not seem to be a centralized area for this; it's all over the place. So I got to questioning.

Anyways, thanks for the replies.

 

[Nenu]

I got to thinking, is there one place (a website) that specializes in video card drivers and which ones work better with which cards.

Forums.
Make notes as you come across salient info you are after.


I have found the recent releases not so stable with my overclock so I am staying with 353.38 until I read positive news.
(980ti user)

 

[Saabjock]

I got to thinking, is there one place (a website) that specializes in video card drivers and which ones work better with which cards. I read somewhere (cannot find it again) that the Nvidia 331.xx drivers were specifically for the 700 series. Is there some sort of table that says "355.xx work better with 980's while 353.xx work better with 960's and 970's? Not just from a gaming stand point, but as an overall?

I am not sure, but thought I would throw this out there to see if something like this exists.

I typically wait until I read a cross-sampling of other users of similar hardware, before I do a video driver update.
Wish Nvidia gave the option to download the drivers, 3D controller, Experience, PhysX etc.... separate.
Those downloads are getting way too big for stuff I never install or use.