Final Thoughts

So, which driver is better? Well, let's look at it like this. For every positive result, that driver set gets a +1. For no gain we see the driver get 0, while for a drop in performance the driver gets a -1. What all this results in is the ForceWare setup getting a -5 and the Catalyst one getting a +12.

The winner by a clear margin is the Catalyst driver suite, making them the best driver for Windows 7. Of course this doesn't mean that you should install the Catalyst driver on your GTX 285, nor does it mean you can. But if you're using an ATI graphics card you can install Windows 7 knowing that for the most part your performance is going to be up more often than down.

Now, the only real problem with this score is that it shows the ForceWare in a really negative light. To be honest, though, the drops in performance are extremely small with them quite often being less than 1%.

So, while overall it might not look as positive for NVIDIA users, when looking at our other Windows 7 article we did squaring VGA performance between the two operating systems with the GTX 285 2GB from GIGABYTE and that 5% drop in performance results in only an FPS or two, which is really nothing to be worried about.

Apart from the massive CINEBENCH jump for the Catalyst setup, we find that that the few + or - % does very little for your overall game experience and the chances are you're going to be happy with the performance you get out of Windows 7, be it on an ATI based graphics card or a NVIDIA one.