Last week we noticed quite a few GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) vs. Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) articles pop-up online at the same time. They came online just after the new Forceware 180.70 drivers were released or leaked, however Nvidia prefers we put it. Interestingly one of these articles came to the conclusion that the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) graphics card was now far superior to the Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) thanks to these new drivers. Obviously such a statement peaked our interests and we decided to investigate.

Over the past month I have done quite a bit of performance testing in new games such as Fallout 3, FarCry 2, Call of Duty 5 – World at War, Dead Space, and even Sacred 2. What we have noticed is that in many of these new games the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) is really starting to pull ahead of the Radeon HD 4870 (1GB).

However this has not been because of a new driver, these new games simply appear to have been designed to work better with Nvidia hardware. Already we had been testing with the Forceware 180.43 driver for about a month now. I can honestly say that we have not seen any real improvements over previous drivers for quite some time now.

Therefore, if the Forceware 180.70 for whatever reason had enhanced the performance of the GeForce GTX range in leaps and bounds, then ATI really could be in trouble. So before we take an in-depth look at the performance situation between the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) and Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) graphics cards, we decided to compare the Forceware drivers first.

This will allow us to determine if it is in fact a new and magical Nvidia driver that is delivering all this extra performance. For this comparison we are going back roughly 4 months to the Forceware 177.79 driver, which will be compared to the new 180.70 driver which is causing all this fuss. Now keep in mind that the Forceware 177.79 driver pre-dates Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 5 – World at War, Dead Space, Sacred 2, and Fallout 3, so if the 180.70 was going to be faster than any driver, it would be this one.