NEW Life for your GCN GPU Benchmarking 'NimeZ' Drivers on the HD 7970
**Exploring the Nimes Driver Package Set: Reviving Older AMD Graphics Cards**
In a recent video we published, our viewers expressed interest in exploring the Nimes driver package set. This driver package is particularly special because it allows older graphics cards, such as the HD 7970, to receive the latest driver support from AMD, even though AMD officially discontinued support for these cards earlier this year. The discontinuation of support for cards like the HD 7000 series, 200/300, and R9 Fury series left many gamers frustrated, as they were hesitant to invest in newer, more expensive graphics cards when their current setups remained capable of handling modern titles.
The primary benefit of using the Nimes driver package is immediately apparent: it enables games that previously refused to boot on older hardware to load properly. For instance, during our testing, *Forza Horizon 5* would not run on the HD 7970 until we installed these custom drivers. However, it’s important to note that while this driver set addresses compatibility issues and eliminates error messages, it doesn’t necessarily deliver significant performance improvements across all games.
### Installation Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
Before diving into gaming benchmarks, let’s outline how the installation process works. We followed a tutorial from a Russian YouTuber, which included English subtitles for our convenience. The steps involved:
1. **Clean Uninstall**: Perform an AMD clean uninstall to remove all existing drivers.
2. **Custom Installation**: Reinstall drivers by loading a custom file in the AMD dependencies folder.
After installation, Windows should recognize the latest drivers. However, in the case of the HD 7970, it initially appeared as an R9 280. We manually changed it to an R9 280 X for optimal performance during our benchmarks.
### Gaming Benchmarks: Performance Analysis
We tested five different titles to assess the performance impact of the Nimes driver package:
1. **Age of Empires IV**: Unfortunately, we noticed lower FPS when first installing the custom drivers. However, after switching to an R9 280 X, performance remained consistent, with slightly better 10.1 lows.
2. **Forza Horizon 5**: This game initially refused to boot with the original drivers but ran successfully after installing the custom set. Performance was modest, with average FPS improving marginally upon switching to an R9 280 X.
3. **Back for Blood**: We observed a drop in FPS when using the HD 7970, though it improved slightly after switching to an R9 280 X.
4. **New World**: This title delivered the best performance with the R9 280 X setup, outperforming both the default and modified configurations for the HD 7970.
5. **Strange Brigade**: The game ran smoothly at consistent FPS across all setups.
### Final Thoughts and Considerations
While the Nimes driver package successfully addresses compatibility issues and eliminates error messages, it doesn’t deliver significant performance boosts. The HD 7970 remains a standout card for its longevity and reliability. If you can lower your settings to medium or high at 1080p, you’ll still achieve a smooth gaming experience in most titles.
One consideration is the cost of newer graphics cards. With many modern games available on platforms like Xbox Game Pass, which offers affordable monthly subscriptions, maintaining older hardware becomes a viable and cost-effective option for casual gamers.
### Viewer Questions: Hardware Testing Insights
In response to viewer inquiries about hardware testing methods:
- **Dual SSD Setup**: We use two 2TB SSDs—one for Intel platforms and another for AMD AM4—to avoid conflicts during benchmarking.
- **Driver Management**: A clean uninstall followed by a fresh install ensures consistent results across different platforms.
- **Game Installation**: Due to weak internet in our region, we pre-install games rather than download them repeatedly.
Thank you for staying tuned throughout this video. If you found it helpful or have questions about hardware testing, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you and exploring more content as requested by our community. Stay subscribed for future videos, and catch you in the next one!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin a recent video we published you guys in the comments section requested that i take a look at the nimes driver package set now this driver package set is actually pretty special for a good reason and that is it enables cards like this hd 7970 to get the latest driver support from amd even though earlier this year amd stopped supporting cards like the hd 7000 series the 200 300 and even the r9 fury series which left a lot of gamers frustrated in that they didn't want to go out and buy a new graphics card especially given the prices of newer graphics cards at this point in time and since a lot of these gravity cards are still perfectly capable of even playing the latest titles so it made sense that something like the nimes driver set exists to this date and the first biggest benefit that we're going to point out before we get into the gaming benchmark numbers is that some games will now be able to load in the case of the games that we're testing here today forza horizon 5 would not boot on the 7970 until we installed these custom drivers then i was able to play the game however if you are hoping for a massive uplift in performance in certain titles then perhaps this driver set isn't the magic bullet that you're looking for let's take a look at the numbers right after this sponsor spot get rid of this annoying activate windows message then today's video sponsor scdkeys has you covered for as little as 12 us dollars after you enter that coupon code bftyc you can cop yourself a legit single end user license today links in description below welcome back to tech yes city and the hd 7970s perhaps some would argue and i personally would argue that it is the greatest gravis card for pc gamers of all time in that it was released over nine years ago and it's had the longest running driver support having the drive sports stop in 2021 midway this year so the first thing we did in today's video was i ran some benchmarks with five different titles and then after that i then downloaded the custom package and what i did was i followed a tutorial from another youtuber who put it all in russian but they did have english subtitles and basically what you do is you do an amd clean uninstall so you uninstall all your previous amd drivers and then you start again whilst loading in a custom file in the amd dependencies folder then after that you should be okay and in windows you should see that you have december's latest drivers installed but in the case of the 7970 it actually came up as an r9 280 and we will show this in the benchmark numbers here today where i actually had to manually change it to an r9 280 x to get it to run to the numbers before we installed these custom drivers so unfortunately at least in age of empires 4 we had lower fps when we initially installed this driver set and then after we changed it to a 280x we got pretty much the same fps however it was important to note that the 10.1 lows were slightly better with the custom modded drivers and another thing we did notice with age of empires 4 was that the error message that came up before we installed these custom driver sets basically telling us that we got legacy drivers the next title was fours of five now as we said in the intro this just flat out refused to boot with the original drivers that we had installed but then after we installed the custom drives we could get this game to run although the performance wasn't that great we came in with 25 average fps and then we came in after that with 28 average fps after we changed it to a 280 x the next title is back for blood here's where we got 49 average fps with of course an error message booting up with the 7970 install then after the custom driver set we actually dropped down to 40 and then 47 respectively so with it recognized as a 280 we're getting 40 average fps then as a 280 x we've got 47 average fps however the 1 and 0.1 lows are actually significantly higher on the 280 x custom modded driver set this time around they're moving on new world here's where we got the 280x coming with the best numbers as opposed to 7970 and then that beat out the 280 default install numbers on the nimes driver software package new world also managed to get rid of the error message just like the previous three titles that we tested then for the last game on benchmark here is strange brigade we went from 53 fps to 53 average fps and then as the default 280 it was running at 46 average fps so those gaming numbers aside unfortunately it does seem like the amd fine wine technology has come to an end in 2021 at least for the gcn architecture but the biggest benefit i noticed that came out of this nimes driver software install of course was getting rid of the error messages and the compatibility of the card which worked a lot better after we installed these drivers than before but as we saw in those benchmarks the extra fps just really wasn't there the one thing i will stress about the 7970 is even though we tested at 1080p high settings if you can get these newer driver sets and then drop the settings to 1080p low or even medium you get a nice smooth 60 hertz playable experience and pretty much all the titles that we showed here today with the exception of forza horizon 5 which is actually very demanding from the initial benchmarks that we ran here today and there's probably one more thing that people will say is well if you can afford all these titles then why wouldn't you just go out and buy a different graphics card and the funny thing about three of the titles here today is that they're all included on the xbox game pass which is actually pretty cheap to pay every month and so there's a lot of people there who just want to play games and they won't want to go get ripped off on the new gpu prices in that current situation so keeping on to your old cards and getting the most out of them is still viable and this is still a good little trick but it won't get you that extra fps and that's something that i have to stress at least from the testing that i've done here today anyway with that aside i hope you guys enjoyed today's video if you did then be sure to hit that like button also let us know in the comment section below do you have a different gpu like an r9 380 and you've tried this nime software package and you've had perhaps a better experience or a different experience love reading your thoughts and opinions as always and of course if you guys have requests for content like this since the last time you guys requested this one it got actually quite a lot of upvote so if you guys really want to see a particular piece of content then be sure to let us know in the comments section below in terms of installing these custom drivers i'll just put the link to the russian uh person's install tutorial which was very straightforward even though it's translated you pretty much just download three different files uninstall your old drivers install the new drivers and you are good to go so do let us know below love reading those thoughts and opinions as always just like this question of the day here which comes from edwin k and they ask can you make a video about the tricks of a hardware tester how do you install windows 10 and do you download the steam games every time or is there a steam ssd so basically when it comes to testing i don't know how other people do it but i've got two different two terabyte ssds one of them is an intel platform ssd the other one is an amd am4 platform ssd and so once i start say for instance benchmarking gpus on the intel platform i'll run through the nvidia numbers then do a complete driver uninstall then run the amd numbers or vice versa but i think you don't want to mix the platforms like the intel and the ryzen platforms that can spell problems for your fps but in terms of the gpu drivers as long as you do a complete ddu uninstall get rid of everything on that particular side then do a fresh install of your drivers you should be good to go in terms of your gaming numbers but in terms of redownloading the games off steam i live in australia where the internet at least where i live is still pretty pissed weak so unfortunately i have to get around that by having all the games pre-installed because i don't have to spend days and days re-downloading games anyhow hope that answers that question and i'll catch you guys in another tech video very soon if you stayed this far and you're enjoying that tech yes content be sure to hit that sub button ring that bell and i'll catch you on the next one peace out for now bye youin a recent video we published you guys in the comments section requested that i take a look at the nimes driver package set now this driver package set is actually pretty special for a good reason and that is it enables cards like this hd 7970 to get the latest driver support from amd even though earlier this year amd stopped supporting cards like the hd 7000 series the 200 300 and even the r9 fury series which left a lot of gamers frustrated in that they didn't want to go out and buy a new graphics card especially given the prices of newer graphics cards at this point in time and since a lot of these gravity cards are still perfectly capable of even playing the latest titles so it made sense that something like the nimes driver set exists to this date and the first biggest benefit that we're going to point out before we get into the gaming benchmark numbers is that some games will now be able to load in the case of the games that we're testing here today forza horizon 5 would not boot on the 7970 until we installed these custom drivers then i was able to play the game however if you are hoping for a massive uplift in performance in certain titles then perhaps this driver set isn't the magic bullet that you're looking for let's take a look at the numbers right after this sponsor spot get rid of this annoying activate windows message then today's video sponsor scdkeys has you covered for as little as 12 us dollars after you enter that coupon code bftyc you can cop yourself a legit single end user license today links in description below welcome back to tech yes city and the hd 7970s perhaps some would argue and i personally would argue that it is the greatest gravis card for pc gamers of all time in that it was released over nine years ago and it's had the longest running driver support having the drive sports stop in 2021 midway this year so the first thing we did in today's video was i ran some benchmarks with five different titles and then after that i then downloaded the custom package and what i did was i followed a tutorial from another youtuber who put it all in russian but they did have english subtitles and basically what you do is you do an amd clean uninstall so you uninstall all your previous amd drivers and then you start again whilst loading in a custom file in the amd dependencies folder then after that you should be okay and in windows you should see that you have december's latest drivers installed but in the case of the 7970 it actually came up as an r9 280 and we will show this in the benchmark numbers here today where i actually had to manually change it to an r9 280 x to get it to run to the numbers before we installed these custom drivers so unfortunately at least in age of empires 4 we had lower fps when we initially installed this driver set and then after we changed it to a 280x we got pretty much the same fps however it was important to note that the 10.1 lows were slightly better with the custom modded drivers and another thing we did notice with age of empires 4 was that the error message that came up before we installed these custom driver sets basically telling us that we got legacy drivers the next title was fours of five now as we said in the intro this just flat out refused to boot with the original drivers that we had installed but then after we installed the custom drives we could get this game to run although the performance wasn't that great we came in with 25 average fps and then we came in after that with 28 average fps after we changed it to a 280 x the next title is back for blood here's where we got 49 average fps with of course an error message booting up with the 7970 install then after the custom driver set we actually dropped down to 40 and then 47 respectively so with it recognized as a 280 we're getting 40 average fps then as a 280 x we've got 47 average fps however the 1 and 0.1 lows are actually significantly higher on the 280 x custom modded driver set this time around they're moving on new world here's where we got the 280x coming with the best numbers as opposed to 7970 and then that beat out the 280 default install numbers on the nimes driver software package new world also managed to get rid of the error message just like the previous three titles that we tested then for the last game on benchmark here is strange brigade we went from 53 fps to 53 average fps and then as the default 280 it was running at 46 average fps so those gaming numbers aside unfortunately it does seem like the amd fine wine technology has come to an end in 2021 at least for the gcn architecture but the biggest benefit i noticed that came out of this nimes driver software install of course was getting rid of the error messages and the compatibility of the card which worked a lot better after we installed these drivers than before but as we saw in those benchmarks the extra fps just really wasn't there the one thing i will stress about the 7970 is even though we tested at 1080p high settings if you can get these newer driver sets and then drop the settings to 1080p low or even medium you get a nice smooth 60 hertz playable experience and pretty much all the titles that we showed here today with the exception of forza horizon 5 which is actually very demanding from the initial benchmarks that we ran here today and there's probably one more thing that people will say is well if you can afford all these titles then why wouldn't you just go out and buy a different graphics card and the funny thing about three of the titles here today is that they're all included on the xbox game pass which is actually pretty cheap to pay every month and so there's a lot of people there who just want to play games and they won't want to go get ripped off on the new gpu prices in that current situation so keeping on to your old cards and getting the most out of them is still viable and this is still a good little trick but it won't get you that extra fps and that's something that i have to stress at least from the testing that i've done here today anyway with that aside i hope you guys enjoyed today's video if you did then be sure to hit that like button also let us know in the comment section below do you have a different gpu like an r9 380 and you've tried this nime software package and you've had perhaps a better experience or a different experience love reading your thoughts and opinions as always and of course if you guys have requests for content like this since the last time you guys requested this one it got actually quite a lot of upvote so if you guys really want to see a particular piece of content then be sure to let us know in the comments section below in terms of installing these custom drivers i'll just put the link to the russian uh person's install tutorial which was very straightforward even though it's translated you pretty much just download three different files uninstall your old drivers install the new drivers and you are good to go so do let us know below love reading those thoughts and opinions as always just like this question of the day here which comes from edwin k and they ask can you make a video about the tricks of a hardware tester how do you install windows 10 and do you download the steam games every time or is there a steam ssd so basically when it comes to testing i don't know how other people do it but i've got two different two terabyte ssds one of them is an intel platform ssd the other one is an amd am4 platform ssd and so once i start say for instance benchmarking gpus on the intel platform i'll run through the nvidia numbers then do a complete driver uninstall then run the amd numbers or vice versa but i think you don't want to mix the platforms like the intel and the ryzen platforms that can spell problems for your fps but in terms of the gpu drivers as long as you do a complete ddu uninstall get rid of everything on that particular side then do a fresh install of your drivers you should be good to go in terms of your gaming numbers but in terms of redownloading the games off steam i live in australia where the internet at least where i live is still pretty pissed weak so unfortunately i have to get around that by having all the games pre-installed because i don't have to spend days and days re-downloading games anyhow hope that answers that question and i'll catch you guys in another tech video very soon if you stayed this far and you're enjoying that tech yes content be sure to hit that sub button ring that bell and i'll catch you on the next one peace out for now bye you\n"