Nvidia 178.13 Drivers - performance drop?

I've just installed the Nvidia 178.13 drivers in order to get my twin 9800GTX+'s to play together in SLI mode.

When I'm using them in non-SLI mode (as I prefer running two monitors unless I need the full-on gfx power) I'm fairly certain that I'm getting frame-rate drops in CoX. It's intermittent and although a lot of the time I'm seeing steady 60fps I'll get fairly frequent drops to 50 and 45.

However, you know what it's like. As soon as you start to concentrate on something too much you start to undermine your own confidence about whether it's actually happening or you're making it up...

Has anyone else who's had cause to update to these drivers seen any performance changes?

(the previous version that I was using was 175.19 as the later versions didn't work or weren't as stable with the 9800GTX+ under Vista 64 and I used to get rock solid 60fps even in the middle of Rikti raids).

Cheers

Drag

---

Ever wondered how our costumes stay so clean and shiny given everything we put them through?

Then you need to try out Spandex Crisis (Arc ID 32943)

CoH is known to have many issues with SLi mode, so I'm not surprised you're getting frame rate drops. Be grateful it works at ALL! Many people just get driver or client crashes when they try to SLi in CoH.

Personally, I find SLi & Crossfire modes to be highly overrated and it puzzles me why people fall for the hype. The small performance increase REALLY doesn't justify the cost of 2 cards... Seems the card makers are realising this too, as they're starting to release more dual GPU cards instead, which gives a greater performance boost than 2 cards.

---

@FloatingFatMan

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Actually the framerate drops were happening when the cards weren't running in SLI mode. I didn't bother to try CoH under SLI as it really doesn't need it. I've now rolled back the drivers and found a set that will happily run CoH at 60fps when not SLI'd and will SLI the cards when I want to run applications that need the extra boost.

And yeah, can't argue with your analysis on the cost/benefit of two cards. I was expecting a bigger boost than I actually got but hey, I think I'm way past the point of making rational decisions when purchasing toys (which is how I tend to approach PC upgrade decisions).

---

Ever wondered how our costumes stay so clean and shiny given everything we put them through?

Then you need to try out Spandex Crisis (Arc ID 32943)