As per a recent article at Computerbase.de, the Californian graphics forge nVidia released the new nVidia Forceware 163.44 driver, which, specifically with nVidia GeForce 8500GT, 8600GT & 8800GTS 320MB cards, improves performance by up to 48% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
The problem is a so-called VRAM bug, concerning all nVidia cards of the GeForce 8 series, more precisely, it's caused by programming errors in the memory management. Hence it reduces performance with said cards and prevents them from unfolding their full potential - due to the massive amount of VRAM of the 8800GTS 640 / 800GTX / 8800GTX Ultra, these cards are not effected, because the memory is by far not stressed as much as with the other mentioned cards.
Although, with Forceware 163.44, the VRAM bug could not be fixed completely, its effects could be reduced. Therefore, further performance boosts can be expected with future driver releases.
PC Games Hardware has been testing the driver and sums up their test results:
"By now, we can recommend the newest driver to all nVidia users, after seeing the test results.With the GeForce 7 series, the Forceware 163.44 driver is slightly faster than the previous versions and does not introduce any new problems.
With the GeForce 8800 GTS/320 however, the results could be easily called a performance explosion. The new driver increases the card's performance by no less than 48 percent, compared to the Forceware 162.18 drivers (under Windows XP). In the case of Windows Vista x64, it's still 25 percent, with 32 bit it's only 13 percent."
-Computerbase.de
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i myself have 8600 GT & vista 32 bit i did see a some increase in FPS but that is huge in windows xp...
nVidia Forceware 163.44 - 48% more performance in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. & other games
. Damn I need to buy a new card for AGP
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