Nvidia Driver Update RTX 3000 Series Performance Review

Nvidia Driver Update RTX 3000 Series Performance Review

Introduction

As we’re sure you are aware, it’s incredibly busy in the OC3D offices. Lately there have been so many product launches, and there will soon be more, that we’ve been absolutely run off our feet ensuring you get fresh content at the right time. This usually means that new driver launches, besides obviously using the most up-to-date ones on our new reviews, generally pass us by.

We tend to assume that everyone uses the latest drivers all the time. Going back to old reviews to revisit them purely based upon driver updates would be a full-time occupation. However, the newest Nvidia drivers are claimed to provide a significant performance upgrade. Therefore, on the off-chance some of you adhere to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t update’ maxim, we wanted to find out if there really was any extra performance to be gleaned, or whether it’s a big of marketing speak. Or, perhaps, it’s the kind of performance upgrade that only works in very specific scenarios.

So we’ve gathered together one of each of the important 3000 series Nvidia cards, their latest drivers, our current test suite and system, and set to work.

Test Setup

Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti
Nvidia RTX 3080
Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti
Nvidia GeForce Driver 526.98
 
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB Series DDR4 3600MHz
Corsair HX1500i PSU
Corsair iCUE H150i RGB Pro XT AIO
Corsair MP600 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
Corsiar Obsidian 500D RGB SE
Windows 10

Our older results were on the same test system but with the newest drivers at the time of each cards launch.

Let’s get to it.