Using my mediocre Q9550/8GB computer, I monitored the effect of the GTX-470 NVIDIA driver version (from the WHQL driver 257.21 onwards to the most current 275.33 that came out a week ago) on PPBM5 test results over the last year or so. I was hoping to see a continuing improvement in test results as the NVIDIA drivers kept getting updated, and the CUDA system got more and more tweaked.
For either CS5.03 or CS5.5, there was absolutely no change in PPBM5 test results on updating the video drivers with my system while keeping the CS5.x version constant. (Other users on the Adobe forums have reported improvements in stability, though.) NVIDIA lists significant improvements in game performances over this range of drivers. So either the PPBM5 test does not measure CUDA improvements attributable to these software updates, or there weren't any improvements that impacted the performance of Premiere Pro. I wonder why I keep updating these drivers...
>Other users on the Adobe forums have reported improvements in stability
If you don't have any problems with stability, you don't need to update your drivers
I have a GTX 285 with no problems, and my driver is dated 4-3-2010... of course, the card is that old also