RTX 50 and 40-series users are getting a solid performance boost after installing Nvidia’s latest drivers
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Nvidia releases new GPU drivers from time to time, each focusing on fixing bugs and issues that users may be facing. However, the latest driver version, 576.02, is doing more than just fixing issues. While this update was mainly meant to deal with bugs and problems that affected many RTX GPUs in recent months, it turns out that it's also giving users a nice performance boost, especially for those using RTX 50-series cards.
Latest Nvidia drivers improve performance and efficiency
Over the past few months, several users have reported issues with Nvidia’s earlier drivers, including performance drops, higher idle power usage, and even serious bugs. But with the release of the 576.02 driver, it seems like Nvidia has taken a step in the right direction. Not only does it solve many of the known problems, but it also improves power efficiency and gives a noticeable performance bump in both benchmarks and real-world gaming.
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One of the biggest improvements is seen in the RTX 5080. In benchmark tests like 3DMark Steel Nomad, users have reported gains of between 4% and 7.5% compared to the older driver. For example, one test result jumped from 8832 points to 9215 points just by updating the driver. Another user saw scores rise from 8400 to 9033. These are solid improvements, especially considering they came from a simple driver update.
As far as gaming is concerned, in Marvel Rivals, the RTX 5080 paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D went from about 140 FPS to over 150 FPS after the new driver. That's a 5-7% performance increase without any extra tweaking. Similar improvements have been shared by owners of the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti as well. Even some RTX 40-series users have seen a small boost, around 3-4%, with the new driver. For instance, one RTX 4080 user mentioned they were previously getting around 148 FPS in Black Ops 6, which jumped to 154 after they installed the latest driver update.
The driver also brings better power efficiency. For example, the RTX 5070, which used to run at 180 MHz when idle, now drops to just 22 MHz. The RTX 5060 Ti also benefits, using only 7W of power when idle – down from higher levels in earlier driver versions.
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