NVIDIA 100.14.19 + 8800GTS 640MB

This past Tuesday NVIDIA finally delivered an updated Linux and Solaris display driver (100.14.19) after they failed to deliver a newer driver since June of this year -- not even a new beta driver! This new software release does, however, contain a number of fixes especially for the GeForce 8 series. After we're all recovered from Intel's Fall 2007 IDF we will follow up with additional NVIDIA benchmarks, but in between IDF parties we benchmarked a GeForce 8800GTS 640MB with the previous 100.14.11 display driver and then the new 100.14.19 driver release. The performance regression fix is very apparent!

The hardware consisted of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 running at 3.2GHz, 2GB of OCZ Flex XLC memory, Gigabyte's P35 motherboard, and a Western Digital Serial ATA 2.0 hard drive. Benchmarks used were Doom 3 and Quake 4. The GPU was a Gigabyte GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCI Express running at its stock speeds. The Linux distribution used was Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" with the Linux 2.6.20 kernel and X.Org 7.2.