We all know after reading the previews that people started saying that nVidia will deliver drivers with 10%-30% performance increase.
In some rare cases I would believe so. Though the thing is, I doubt that they could deliver such a percentage to games going over 300fps *cough* quake 3 *cough*.
What I see is that people forget that small percentages can mean massive gains.
IE: 10% of 100? = 10
Want to know the calculation? .1*100 = 10
Turn the percentage into a value, remember you can't work with percentages as a percentage is NOT a value.
If nVidia can deliver a 30% gain in performance when playing with:
1280x960
32bpp
8x FSAA
64-tap aniso (with balanced/aggressive/etc... modes [whichever looks best])
all @ 25fps, then you will have 32.5fps.
On another note:
Are the framerates comparable to [H]'s benchmarks with both NV30 and R300 at highest details? No, not even close. A driver release improving the NV30's performance by 30% under that situation will not do much to catch up to the performance level of the R300. Sure, average performance will be 35.1fps, but is that comparable to the R300's 62fps? Not by a long shot.
An increase of 129.9% in the drivers will bring the NV30 to roughly Ati's level of performance which is 62fps, NV30's will be 62.073fps, though if using only 1 decimal place without rounding off it's exactly 62fps. Would a 129.9% increase in performance in drivers ever be real with the NV30? I very much doubt it. I would say the probability of that is 0.
Thoughts:
So in the end, I would be expecting a 5%-10% performance increase in most benchmarks/games and a 30% increase in very rare circumstances like playing at best IQ settings.
In some rare cases I would believe so. Though the thing is, I doubt that they could deliver such a percentage to games going over 300fps *cough* quake 3 *cough*.
What I see is that people forget that small percentages can mean massive gains.
IE: 10% of 100? = 10
Want to know the calculation? .1*100 = 10
Turn the percentage into a value, remember you can't work with percentages as a percentage is NOT a value.
If nVidia can deliver a 30% gain in performance when playing with:
1280x960
32bpp
8x FSAA
64-tap aniso (with balanced/aggressive/etc... modes [whichever looks best])
all @ 25fps, then you will have 32.5fps.
On another note:
Are the framerates comparable to [H]'s benchmarks with both NV30 and R300 at highest details? No, not even close. A driver release improving the NV30's performance by 30% under that situation will not do much to catch up to the performance level of the R300. Sure, average performance will be 35.1fps, but is that comparable to the R300's 62fps? Not by a long shot.
An increase of 129.9% in the drivers will bring the NV30 to roughly Ati's level of performance which is 62fps, NV30's will be 62.073fps, though if using only 1 decimal place without rounding off it's exactly 62fps. Would a 129.9% increase in performance in drivers ever be real with the NV30? I very much doubt it. I would say the probability of that is 0.
Thoughts:
So in the end, I would be expecting a 5%-10% performance increase in most benchmarks/games and a 30% increase in very rare circumstances like playing at best IQ settings.