I did a benchmark comparrison between the two drivers..I did it with Doom3, 3dmark 03, 3dmark01, and auquamark03. Heres what Ive got

3dmark 4.9 beta - 6601 3dmark03 4.8 - 6717

3dmark01 4.9 beta - 17689 3dmark01 4.8 - 18694

aquamark03 4.9 beta - 46,073 aquamark03 4.8 - 47,009
(gfx = 5,775 cpu = 8,280) (gfx = 5,940 cpu = 8,270)

Doom 3 4.9 beta - 2148 frames rendered in 54.0 seconds = 39.8 FPS
Doom 3 4.8 - 2148 frames rendered in 52.9 seconds = 40.6 FPS

Doom was benched at 1024x768 in Ultra quality

And onthing I did notice in aquamark with the 4,8's the cpu score went down as the gfx score went up...is that the CPU throttling ive heard about?

just installed 4.8s
gonna try them

thanx for the info

my pleasure

so does this mean we dont need the 4.9's? since they were gonna be the doom 3 booster?? I hope they do some more with them now besides the new control panel ....and everyone quit whining over a big download...get broadband..lol and is it only this big because of the new control panel or is it gonna be like this for here on out? And about all this opengl 2.0 talk...i play soldier of fortune 2 and its opengl...with the new ogl2.0 being incorperated in the new drivers will it bump the performance up...or do the games have to be written for ogl2.0?

there isn´t a new control panel...
i like them more than 4.9b.

There is going to be a new control panel, but I am not sure if it will be this next release...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17910

Cheers