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NVIDIA 334.89 Driver Update - SLI Fixes & Performance Boosts

Posted on February 19, 2014

With the release of the new GTX 750, GTX 750 TI & Titan Black we also celebrate the ever-popular New Driver Day (not a worldwide holiday yet, but hope springs eternal). The NVIDIA GeForce 334.89 WHQL drivers are out and, at least according to NVIDIA’s in-house test machines, the performance boosts are quite impressive. As with all things done in-house, take the results they experience with a grain of salt. It is unlikely your system will perfectly match what they are using for their test machines. You should still notice an improvement once you get the update, especially if you were on the borderline for rising up to the next level of graphics quality.

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Performance Gains for GeForce GTX 770/780/TITAN/780Ti:

  • Up to 19% in F1 2013
  • Up to 18% in Sleeping Dogs
  • Up to 16% in Hitman Absolution
  • Up to 15% in Company of Heroes 2
  • Up to 10% in Assassin's Creed 3
  • Up to 7% in BioShock Infinite
  • Up to 6% in Sniper Elite V2
  • Up to 5% in Total War: Rome 2

The new driver cleans up a number of problems, increases the SLI profiles, created the option to SLI the GTX 460, and fixed errors with Tri-SLI & Quad-SLI and ShadowPlay CTDs (Crash-to-Desktop) in certain games. Not all of the issues with multi-SLI setups being less powerful than a single GPU are fixed (though this is most likely partially engine- / optimization-related, an example of this problem was discovered in our Titanfall video card benchmarks). The Prefer Maximum Performance setting, in the control panel under Manage 3D Settings, should help compensate for this better as well. It also improves ambient occlusion in Half-Life 2 and some other game/card specific issues like the GeForce GT 730A bug in Rome 2: Total War that prevented it from running.

New and improved SLI Profiles have been created for the following games:

  • Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry
  • Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut
  • The Crew
  • HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • Gas Guzzlers
  • They also updated the following 3D Vision Profiles:
  • Shadow Warrior
  • Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon
  • Walking Dead 2
  • World Rally Championship 4
  • LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
  • The Stanley Parable
  • Everything below this point requires DirectX 10/11 mode in order to see an improvement for 3D Vision:
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
  • Bioshock Infinite 
  • Hitman: Absolution
  • Assassin's Creed III
  • Sniper Elite V2
  • Battlefield 4
  • Splinter Cell: Blacklist
  • Saints Row 4
  • Need for Speed: Most Wanted
  • Far Cry 3
  • Total War: Shogun 2
  • Warframe

Nothing is ever fixed without something breaking. PhysX acceleration on the new Maxwell GPU is not allowed/recognized for Assassin’s Creed: Blacklist or Warframe. This should only affect you if you are lucky enough to already be using the newly-released GTX 750 or GTX 750 Ti or are planning to grab one before the patches are released for them. A driver patch is due out in March for Blacklist and hopefully later today or tomorrow for Warframe. Based on some of the comments on the driver download page, Battlefield 4 (no surprise) is still having issues in surround mode, at certain resolutions, and with smoke particles; however, this was also happening with the previous driver (334.67) so it's likely an EA/DICE issue more than a video card manufacturer issue.

Another important thing to keep in mind with this driver, even though the desktop version covers Windows XP through 8.1, the notebook version only covers Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. If you want the boost for your laptop and have an older version of Windows, it may be time to consider an upgrade.

Here is a link to download GeForce 334.89 WHQL. Just select your OS and have fun.

The release notes are here.

If you experience any problems after installing this, give us a heads-up in the comments section so we can help. Likewise, if you're a benchmarker, please share your improvements so we can crowdsource the test process.

- Scott "abibliboop" Griffin.