Nvidia has a new ForceWare 101.02 XP driver for the upcoming 8600 & 8500 cards. We heard it works well with the 8600GTS and that the driver works fine. The 101.02 driver is not an official one and doesn't have a WHQL certificate. It is not supposed to run on any other Nvidia cards.
The new driver is not much faster with the 7600 GT, but it is a first major driver upgrade for XP in a while.
The chaps at Guru3D modified the .inf file for all of us and you can download the tweaked one from Guru3D here. We can confirm the drivers are working fine with Sparcle's Geforce 7600GT card. Sparcle 7600GT is the first Nvidia's graphics card made on 80 nm processes. Nvidia plans to release bunch of 80 nanometre cards on the April 17th including Geforce 8600GTS, 8600GT and 8500GT cards. We might even have a number or two about these cards before then. Stay tuned.
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Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
3DMark 03 |
Game2 |
Game3 |
Game4 |
|
Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz |
16639 |
111.7 |
99.1 |
101.2 |
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz ForceWare 101.02 |
16692 |
112.3 |
99.3 |
101.5 |
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Composite Figures 3Dmark 03 |
Single Texturinng |
Multi Textur. |
Vertex Shader |
Pixel Shader 2.0 |
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz |
2728.9 |
7431.0 |
48.5 |
327.6 |
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz ForceWare 101.02 |
2757.1 |
7441.1 |
49.4 |
179.5 |
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FEAR |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
2048x1536 |
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 580/1800MHz --- 80nm |
90 |
63 |
46 |
30 |
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz ForceWare 101.02 |
90 |
64 |
47 |
30 |
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FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
|
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 580/1800MHz --- 80nm |
50 |
34 |
25 |
|
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Sparcle Calibre 7600GT 650/1600MHz ForceWare 101.02 |
51 |
34 |
24 |
|
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Compared to previous drivers the scores are slightly better if not the same. In Fear with AA and Aniso on 1600x1200 resolution the score is about four percent or one FPS worse than before.