OS X Nvidia Web Drivers vs OSX Built-in for games

[sbarton]

I've always used the web drivers for my gtx680 mac edition in my mac pro 4,1. The other day I installed some more ram and did a PRAM reset and the machine booted using the built-in OSX drivers (this is normal). I didn't catch it, but noticed over the next couple of days that my performance in Guild Wars 2 was much more fluid and maintained high framerates more easily. It wasn't until I was poking around in my control panel that I noticed the Web Drivers (latest version) weren't enabled. I switched back and forth from the Web Drivers to the built-in one and definitely see a big improvement with the built-in drivers.

I've always heard that for most people the Nvidia web drivers provide better performance, so I'm a bit puzzled at what I'm seeing here.

 

[edddeduck]

I've always used the web drivers for my gtx680 mac edition in my mac pro 4,1. The other day I installed some more ram and did a PRAM reset and the machine booted using the built-in OSX drivers (this is normal). I didn't catch it, but noticed over the next couple of days that my performance in Guild Wars 2 was much more fluid and maintained high framerates more easily. It wasn't until I was poking around in my control panel that I noticed the Web Drivers (latest version) weren't enabled. I switched back and forth from the Web Drivers to the built-in one and definitely see a big improvement with the built-in drivers.

I've always heard that for most people the Nvidia web drivers provide better performance, so I'm a bit puzzled at what I'm seeing here.

Depends on the game, I would drop NV an email so they know they have a regression or else the next OS driver will likely have the same drop.

Web drivers are usually ahead of the OS ones (as OS updates are few and far between) but they are both based off the same code.