In terms of performance, if u`r card is not the current flavor of the year, stepping up or down a revision in drivers will maybe adjust something like a 3dmark score by 10`s of points. Neither way being a dead-cert as to which will go up or down.
Compatability wize, when the nVidia cards step over a generation, eg G70 to G80, u find newer revisions of drivers having more for the newer and prehaps more clutter and less care taken for the older cards - or so it would seem, in practice.
What may work well for a 7300 XFX, may not work quite so well for a Gigabyte and vice versa and so on. Can be due to XFX still making the cards prehaps, and being `in-lab` to test out or something.
Some theory that prehaps work is that if u`ve had a 7300 for years, the newest drivers cause u some grief, in some fashion. If u buy a relatively new one, prehaps one still produced as it`s a good multimedia card, vivo etc, they may work better.
In the individuals case, unless of course some1 has u`r exact card and can advise u otherwize, I tend to think the `suck-it-and-see` method works well.
