My "Drivers Comparison in games" Thread, Constantly Updated with new drivers benchmarks

Why am i doing what i'm doing ?

I felt that the hardware review sites never updated their reviews with the latest drivers and the reviews were done with unmature drivers and this affects the consumer's decision. What if HD 3870 is faster than 9600GT with its current drivers? What if 8800GTS G92 is faster than 8800GTX with current drivers ? What is the best driver out there ? No review out there answers this question. SO i felt the need to answer this question so users can look at this thread and make a decision. With this motivation i will use this thread to keep track of the performance improvements with each and every driver release . Right now i have a 9600GT , so expect to see Nvidia drivers benchmarks right now .But i may soon get my hands on a ATI card, so i will add ATI drivers too to this thread . I will add new games too.

Right now i'm beginning with Call of Duty 4 and FEAR. Expect to see World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Crysis. I'll take ur requests for games and drivers .

NOTE : this thread will only show if there r any performance improvements with the drivers, not a comparison against other cards. Also the hardware will not be overclocked, to show the minimum performance u can get out of this hardware, So with anything overclocked, expect better performance.
Also i dont think i will do 3DMark scores here, as i dont think they reflect gaming performance and they can change so easily even with the same driver. If there is a majority request to that benchmark, then i'll do it.

Here's the CPU'z and GPU'z screen that will be used always :



Drivers : 175.70

Call of Duty 4

The settings were as follows :




The timedemos benchmarked were custom made by me. The maps were "Bog" and "Creek". THe timedemo was run 5 times and bechmarked with FRAPS. the average fps is reported by the extended console. If anyone needs the timedemos, i'll be happy to provide them.

BOG


MIN : 46,  MAX : 90
Average FPS = 65

CREEK



MIN : 35 , Max : 76
Average FPS = 59.5

FEAR

All settings were at maximum with 4xAA/16xAF , patched to v1.08


Min : 46
Avg : 92
Max : 203

______________________________

177.26


COD 4

BOG



MIN : 46, Max = 91
Average FPS = 64.5


CREEK


MIN : 36, Max = 82
Average FPS = 59.8

FEAR


Min : 47
Avg : 92
Max : 207



Plz leave a thx , which will act as a motivation for me to continue this .

This is a good idea.  I too often am bugged that while I am looking at an older review that drivers have improved things.  The best bet is to look at newer graphic card reviews that include older cards.  For example, don't look at a Radeon 3870 review from November 2007, but look at a GeForce 9800GTX review from this spring and pay attention to the 3870's performance.  It doesn't always quite work out idealy since the focus is on the newer card, but it's been my best bet so far.