When 7970 ghz blew up?

[tactic]

Hey everyone!
I am in the middle of upgrading my computer, but that is for my other thread. For right now I have a GPU specific question that perhaps is a simple misunderstanding on my part?

I have been contemplating getting a 7970ghz, gtx 770 or a gtx 780 for my GPU and what I keep reading about the 7970ghz is that with it's 'current' drivers it has had a huge performance upgrade because of the driver itself.

The 770 and the 7970ghz perform roughly equal give or take 1-4% on current top games. Now here is my question, the current Nvidia drivers are having a few issues, most of which they have fixed with their latest release. In the future could Nvidia launch a driver that ups the performance of the gtx's like the drivers did for the ati card? If that happens the 770 will be substantially better than the current 7970ghz correct?

Am I simply misunderstanding what went on with the ati driver? has the 7970ghz always been with the same performance and the driver did absolutely nothing?

I just find this weird that no one elaborates on this which leads me to believe I simply don't understand what actually happened with the ati card.

 

[Aastii]

The vanilla drivers, as in the ones which first come out when the card is released, are not as optimized as later releases are. As the drivers are made better at using what the card has to offer the performance does increase, so a 7970 on day one has less performance than months down the line with better drivers, even though the hardware is identical.

Now, the 770 is essentially just a rebadged 680, so the drivers have matured substantially already. They will improve, but in theory no more than the 7970's would anyway as they are updated as well.

 

[tactic]

awesome, thank you for the explanation!