NVIDIA 385.12 Driver Unlocks Titan Xp Prosumer Performance

NVIDIA is not sitting idly by just as AMD introduced their latest Radeon Pro WX 9100 and Radeon Pro SSG professional graphics cards. Wanting to rain on AMD’s parade, they are introducing the GeForce 385.12 driver update which unlocks several levels of Titan Xp performance. While not gaming related, these new driver optimizations bring a staggering uplift in performance in creative and prosumer applications.

385.12 Driver Optimization Results

Redditor /u/Brutuscat2 ran benchmarks on this driver update to see the performance boost himself on his non-Pascal Titan X. It also includes performance benchmarks from PC Perspective’s Professional Graphics review, which uses different hardware testing setup, is still relatively comparable. The result is very surprising, showing massive increase in performance, even showing a 654% increase in SNX. The rest of the results include:

• Catia – 72% Increase
• Creo – 107% Increase
• Energy – 54% Increase
• Medical – 53% Increase
• Solidworks – 95% Increase

Performance Unlocked or Performance Held-Back?

While the fact that some of the Quadro performance is now enabled on the Titan Xp is not surprising, how big and timely the huge surge in performance is. It certainly begs the question of how much the driver is holding back performance deliberately. It is not completely beyond reason business-wise however since the Titan Xp is much more affordable. The gap in performance is there so that the GTX series does not cut into their Quadro line after all.