Nvidia launches new Battlefield 3 PC drivers

By Fred Dutton Published 24 October, 2011

Claims they boost FPS performance by 11%.

A new set of graphics card drivers from Nvidia are available today, promising to give PC users a hefty performance boost ahead of this week's Battlefield 3 launch.

The GeForce 285.62 WHQL drivers, up for download now, bundle in all the improvements and updates from the 285.27 and 285.38 betas, along with new SLI and 3D Vision profiles for a number of upcoming or recently released titles.

Nvidia reckons that the new drivers will bump Battlefield 3 performance on a GTX 560 by "up to 11%", and also recommends them for Rage and Batman: Arkham City.

See the GeForce site for more game-specific stats and upgrades.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 7 months ago

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  • Vortextk #1 7 months ago

    It's bullshit of course, but great marketing.

    Lol marked down, what someone thinks I'm an amd fanboy? It'd be bullshit from them too.
    Edited by Vortextk at 24/10/11 @ 18:18

  • thenastypasty #2 7 months ago

    I wonder do these work on the 360:)

  • Ranger_Ryu #3 7 months ago

    interesting the site doesn't work for me it keeps crashing :p

  • jasondonervan #4 7 months ago

    @Ranger_Ryu Same here when I used the auto-detect, but if you can narrow the search for your card in the section below, it should go through fine.

  • Ranger_Ryu #5 7 months ago

    that's what I did and it still crashes so.......I'll just wait,thanks though.

  • Vortextk #6 7 months ago

    And apparently that marketing works. Rate down the guy that doesn't eat this drivel up! Seriously? Every single driver release from both companies always state they have some incredible fps gains. Test yourself, oh wait, you can't even do that here because the game hasn't been out for you to do it, and you'll see on average much much lower gains, but usually(not always) gains nonetheless.

  • jasondonervan #7 7 months ago

    @Ranger_Ryu direct link for the 285.62 driver: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers/Results/38978

    Edit: More specifically, it's the 64bit (Vista/Win7) driver.
    Edited by jasondonervan at 24/10/11 @ 19:00

  • DUFFKING #8 7 months ago

    Any sign of AMD drivers yet?

  • WJF #9 7 months ago

    @Vortextk

    It's not beyond the realms of the imagination that Nvidia, equipped with finished code of one of its partners's games, has been making improvements to how that specific game uses the hardware.

    I'm with you in some regard though - I doubt the improvement actually leads to a 4-5fps gain compared to the old drivers. Guess we'll find out when it's released.
    Edited by WJF at 24/10/11 @ 18:45

  • Vortextk #10 7 months ago

    @WJF I agree. But 11%? Compared to what? Not playing it because it wasn't out last week? Beta can't count, the game itself was months old, an end user can't tell where drivers end and beta code begins. It's just a really dumb thing to say "we improved on something that didn't exist". The whole reason drivers get updates is to add more and hopefully run better no doubt, but usually an increase means I could see the lowered performance beforehand first hand. And yeah, I doubt the "increase" is actually a real world average of 11% anyway; "up to" really is such a magical phrase.

  • Gearskin #11 7 months ago

    Aw SNAP!

  • dennett316 #12 7 months ago

    @Vortextk. In what way is this marketing? Nobody buys a new graphics card because of a driver update, and most sensible people keep their drivers up to date as a matter of course anyway.
    It may well be a load of crap, but as it's a free software update, I don't actually get what the problem is.

  • dsmx #13 7 months ago

    Do you lot realise how childish you sound moaning about these numbers?

    Every time nvidia release new drivers they put similar numbers next to the games claiming performance increases and in my experience of having their cards for the last 6 years they genuinely do give you performance increases when they release new drivers.

    Since BF3 is a new game on a brand new engine it stands to reason that both DICE and nvidia have been working together improving support for the game for months so why do you think that a 11% increase is not a possibility?

  • George-Roper #14 7 months ago

    @dsmx

    Because they don't have Nvidia cards, yet desperately want to play BF3 and can't bear that they've gone with an (apparently) inferior product due to AMD not shipping a similar driver update?

  • ThaneKrios #15 7 months ago

    @DUFFKING Yes, AMD released some new drivers too. You can find them here: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU124AMDCat1110PreDriverV3.aspx

  • Lamb #16 7 months ago

    I'd take it the 11% comes from the difference between the prior WHQL release on a single 560 card on BF3.

    From the release it looks like they are pushing the 560 and the 580 as their main cards. I went with the 570s in sli to save £300 instead of the 580s with a "marginal increase" in performance. Though marginal is in the mind and can play tricks on me. :D

    Still got to wonder though why the 590s are frowned on given Nvidia's relative gpu performance chart. Yes a 590 is supposed to be two 580s on one card in sli and is downclocked but its texture fill rate and memory bandwidth are thru the roof.

  • neosalad #17 7 months ago

    Your PC's NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT is below the game's recommended specifications.

    The recommended GPU to enjoy Battlefield 3 is a GeForce GTX 560 or higher (the minimum specification is a GeForce 8800/9800 GT). Check below to see some upgrade options. To see other system requirements for Battlefield 3, please click here.

    :(

    very confusing this card malarky. 1 GB 9500 GT sounds higher than the ones they say i need, but hey ho... i have my 360 and Ps3 i guess, not that i'll get BF3 of course.

  • KayTannee #18 7 months ago

    @neosalad Yeh its thier naming conventions. Tend to be pretty tricky to follow. Best thing to so is just look at a benchmark site for graphics card list in order. Get real world comparison then.

    Ordered a laptop for BF3. Im still concerned about my choice of AMD over Nvidia graphics card. ATI used to be horrific for Laptop drivers, I so hope they improved since way back when last used them. Nvidia always offered far better driver support.

  • FanBoysSuck #19 7 months ago

    Hopefully the new proper release AMD driver will have similar performance improvements as well as a fix for Rage. The latter still stutters like hell even with preview 3 :(

  • Ghettoslag #20 7 months ago

    whats a totally load of bollox this website is to get these new drivers . half the time the websites not responding and when i do a scan to detect my GPU it says sorry could not find a match when i have a MSI 560 ti twin frozrr g/c . this is the biggest load of bollox on the interne
    t and maybe the web developers wan't to make sure their website works properly instead of giving us a dodgey website to get these drivers from

  • deez #21 7 months ago

    @neosalad If you look at their chart, 'recommended' begins at 1080 res, high settings, 40 fps. Lots of cards rated below recommended will still be way better than console, they have a vested interest in you upgrading remember...
    Edited by deez at 25/10/11 @ 14:23

  • obscured021 #22 7 months ago

    Metro dose get about 8% on my system with theses new drivers,compared to the last beta ones, so i guess bf3 will be along the same lines!