Nvidia GeForce 295.73 drivers better Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 performance

By Robert Purchese Published 22 February, 2012

Phwoar - look at those frame rates.

New GeForce drivers (295.73) are out, and they dramatically boost Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 performance.

Specifically, the Skyrim improvements are made to indoor-scene performance, high-resolution texture pack performance and Creation Kit mod performance.

Those with mid-range GTX 560 cards can now properly play Skyrim at 1920x1080, in Ultra Detail and with 16x Anisotropic Filtering.

Before now, indoor scenes at these settings ran at an essentially unplayable 27.6 frames-per-second. With the 295.73 drivers, the same scene runs at 40 frames-per-second.

For SLI GTX 560 cards, performance jumps from just over 50FPS to nearly 80FPS.

GTX 580 performance jumps from ~50FPS to ~70FPS; and SLI GTX 580 performance jumps from ~100FPS to ~120FPS.

card

Graphics cards, the shell suits of PC components. Remember this one? It was made four fans.

In outdoor Skyrim environments, GTX 560 card performance (using the same settings) improves from ~45FPS to ~53FPS.

The other GeForce cards see no change above 60FPS, as performance becomes "CPU-bound".

Also Skyrim-related in 295.73: Ambient Occlusion support is now official, and no longer in beta; and there's a 3D crosshair for 3D Vision users.

The improvements to Mass Effect 3 come from Nvidia enabling SLI set-ups to be fully used.

One GTX 560 card runs the Mass Effect 3 demo (1920x1080) at ~80FPS. SLI GTX 560 cards run the demo at ~150FPS. Up the resolution to 2560x1440, and those numbers are ~40FPS (1 GTX 560) and ~90FPS (SLI GTX 560).

One GTX 570 card runs the Mass Effect 3 demo (1920x1080) at ~100FPS. SLI GTX 570 cards run the demo at ~190FPS. Up the resolution to 2560x1440, and those numbers are ~60FPS (1 GTX 570) and ~110FPS (SLI GTX 570)

To enable SLI, disable Vsync. "A quick and easy tweak," explained Andrew Burnes on the Nvidia blog, "simply open C:\Users\YourUsername\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 3 Demo\BIOGame\Config\GamerSettings.ini, and add useVsync=False and SmoothFramerate=False to the bottom of the [SystemSettings] section, each on separate lines. Save the file and SLI will now work to its full potential."

Edit the GamerSettings.ini file in the full Mass Effect 3 game - located at C:\Users\YourUsername\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Config\ - for the same effect.

The Nvidia 295.73 drivers also add Ambient Occlusion shadowing to the Diablo 3 beta and Modern Warfare 3.

Other games that now make use of SLI GeForce graphics cards after applying these drivers include big names like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, The Darkness 2 and Trine 2.

A bunch of games now have updated 3D Vision profiles, too.

GeForce driver 295.73 also fixes a Battlefield 3 texture corruption problem.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 3 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • talhamid #1 3 months ago

    'Quick and easy tweak" - ROFL

    They got the 'tweak' part right at least!

    When will PC devs start learning from Android and iOS and make easy user experience a priority???

  • LHH #2 3 months ago

    but nvidia drivers are always perfect

  • mccappind #3 3 months ago

    @talhamid I'm sorry but do you find that tweak hard?

  • orangpelupa #4 3 months ago

    yeah. they should make sple nsis or. bat to do the tweak in one click

  • bigjimbeef #5 3 months ago

    I love PC gaming. Not to say that I don't love console gaming - because I do. There's just something great about getting a big performance boost for a game post-launch that makes me happy I still opt for the PC version of multi-platform games.

  • bad09 #6 3 months ago

    Gonna test out Skyrim tonight, Mrs bad09 will be nabbing the PC to play her new Tintin tonight though so hopefully there are soaps on tonight to distract her ;)

    (I'm joking if you read this my love use the PC as long as you want my angel! :) )

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #7 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 12:57:21 22-02-2012

  • mika1h #8 3 months ago

    I hope they fix that "display driver not responding" error that I get with 285.62 when using Firefox or Explorer.

  • bad09 #9 3 months ago

    @mika1h

    They are aware of that, whether this release fixes it or not I don't know but I've not seen it happening on my machine since the last beta drivers so they might have.
    Edited by bad09 at 22/02/12 @ 13:05

  • DrStrangelove #10 3 months ago

    To be fair, Bethesda should really add a "disable vsync" option in the game. Any dev should in any game. And while they're at it, also an fps cap option because the physics engine goes mad when the fps rise too high

    You have to edit a cfg file and download a user-made fps-capping mod in order to get it running right. That stuff belongs into the video options of the game.

  • CloisterBlack #11 3 months ago

    "Before now, indoor scenes at these settings ran at an essentially unplayable 27.6 frames-per-second."

    Oh, please, my laptop runs dungeons on 18fps average, with a tendency to go bellow that, talk about unplayable.

    P.S. Anyone knows if the new drivers finally fix the broken video calls on Skype, introduced a couple of updates ago?
    Edited by CloisterBlack at 22/02/12 @ 13:30

  • M4RV #12 3 months ago

    Out of curiosity, tried the ME3 demo yet again with these drivers, on my SLI setup and didn't notice a difference to be honest. It's not like the game is supposed to be GPU intensive or anything but... :|

  • LHH #13 3 months ago

    @mika1h LIES. Nvidia drivers don't fail

  • phantasma #14 3 months ago

    @DrStrangelove
    To be fair, Bethesda should really add a "disable vsync" option in the game. Any dev should in any game.
    I've read somewhere the reason why they don't allow Vsnyc to be switched off is, that the game somehow measures the ingame time after the frames per second and without Vsync some quests would break or NPC's would lose their schedules.

    A strange design decision nevertheless.

    edit:
    Does someone know, if these new nvidia drivers are different from the beta driver that came out in January?
    Installed them right with Sykrim back then, so i'm afraid i won't get any more big performance leaps now.... game ran quite well but after the high resi pack i could surely do with a little more breathing space for my GPu :-)...
    Edited by phantasma at 22/02/12 @ 13:56

  • ThePissartist #15 3 months ago

    I realise it's porn to some people, but that's one daft looking GPU.

  • ThePissartist #16 3 months ago

    "GTX 570 cards run the demo at ~190FPS"

    Great, just what I always needed.

  • DrStrangelove #17 3 months ago

    Installed it, seems to improve Skyrim performance here. I could notch up shadow detail a bit (to disable stripy shadows) and it still runs smooth, unlike when I tried that earlier.

  • DrStrangelove #18 3 months ago

    @phantasma

    Well when the fps rise too high, the physics go mad and everything starts flying all over the place. Especially in houses all the clutter flies around the room as if it exploded. Also, water detection doesn't work properly, so the game thinks you're in water/out of water (even where there is no water at all) at epileptic speed.

    This can ruin the game, but could very easily be avoided by introducing an fps cap. I downloaded a mod for that, set the cap to 60 fps and everything's fine now.

  • Stevonymo #19 3 months ago

    I don't want to sound ungrateful here but my girl friend bought me PS3 Skyrim for Xmas when I have an uber PC upstairs!!! Thanks love...Now get back in that kitchen and wash those soiled undies...By hand!

  • Arsecake_Baker #20 3 months ago

    The amout of times i read "disable v-sync" makes me wonder why they even bother to add it in the first place! :p

  • CaptainKid #21 3 months ago

    "Those with mid-range GTX 560 cards can now properly play Skyrim at 1920x1080, in Ultra Detail and with 16x Anisotropic Filtering."

    With or without the high res texture pack?

    I find it interesting a MID range €160 graphics card can run at absolute maximum with 16 X af filtering (which is unnecessary in my opinion, almost no diff with 4 in most games). It shows how far PC's have moved on compared to consoles.

  • DrStrangelove #22 3 months ago

    @Arsecake_Baker

    Well, it looks better. Problem is, it plays worse in most cases.

  • TagemandBagem #23 3 months ago

    "It was made four fans."

    oh, you.

  • SpartanGR #24 3 months ago

    @Stevonymo LOL man LOL

  • gjgjg #25 3 months ago

    Before now, indoor scenes at these settings ran at an essentially unplayable 27.6 frames-per-second
    Consoles say hi

  • novacaine #26 3 months ago

    i suggest u get ur facts right before writing anything about pc gaming... for one playing on my gtx 560 the fps has never gone bellow 45 fps anywhere ingame, and the dips to 45 were in towns and have now been fixed with latest patch, and yeah i play at ultra with 4xaa fxaa disabled and 16x af, and with vsync disabled im getting over 95 fps in a lot of outdoor scenes and well over 100 fps indoors so i have no idea where u are getting ur figures from, my specs are i7 920 @ 3.66 with turbo to 3.8, gtx 560, 6gb ddr3. i hate when people think they have the knowledge to write stuff like this....

  • novacaine #27 3 months ago

    and u write other geforce cards see no change past 60 fps bec the game becomes cpu bound??? do u even know what this means??? when playing skyrim at 1080p with latest patch i assure u it isnt very cpu dependant and is only using about 25 - 38% of my 920 which is from 2009. Turn off vsync even on a 560 and ull see well over 60 fps, use a 590 and u will likely have over 100 fps constant, but i suggest to every one turn shadows to high instead of ultra u will get a nice fps boost

  • novacaine #28 3 months ago

    @phantasma u can disable vsync by doing this, Access the SkyrimPrefs.ini found in my documents then my games and find "skyrim" and add iPresentInterval=0 to the bottom of the [Display] section. vsync will now be disabled :) dont recommend it tho unless ur fps drops bellow 30 a lot

  • novacaine #29 3 months ago

    @gjgjg u do know that the game runs on low with 1-2 settings on medium and no AA only fxaa which basically just blurs the screen to hide jaggies, and is rendered at like 580p resolution upscaled to 720p and yet still drops to low 20's a LOT "console say hi" more like pc ftw screw u console :D

  • novacaine #30 3 months ago

    @CaptainKid i dont recommend the official high res texture pack, as the quality it offers doesnt justify the drop in performance, u can get a better texture pack from "skyrimnexus" just be sure to get the "medium" package unless u have like 2gb of video ram, i play with my 560 and the medium pack on ultra and never ever drop bellow 60 in any situation
    Edited by novacaine at 24/02/12 @ 00:26

  • novacaine #31 3 months ago

    @Stev

  • novacaine #32 3 months ago

    @DrStrangelove theres a tool called "dxtory" which allows u to limit ur fps in any dx 9.10.11 game its preety nice, but vsync does the job in most new games nicely :)

  • novacaine #33 3 months ago

    @mika1h ive had this issue with the last year of drivers :D however if u disable hardware acceleration in firefox it seems to make it less frequent :)

  • novacaine #34 3 months ago

    http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/OPS/Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-GeForce-GTX-560-OPS
    skyrim running an a 560 with average of almost 50 fps and this is when the game first came out :) again get ur numbers right before making ur next post, and most people tend to get the 560 "ti" for a few more € u can get maybe an extra 10 fps in some games and more cuda cores ect ect :)
    Edited by novacaine at 24/02/12 @ 00:28