I noticed the shadows improvement with nVidia's new drivers as well, especially at 8092. I will say one thing, I can run max everything EXCEPT environment sliders and see 59 or 60 max no matter what I do in game. If I leave the slider two notches from the left, so 2 shy of max, my FPS stays maxed out continuously, however if I max it full left, it'll drop to the low 40's as a previous poster just said in a high traffic area.
For my 3820 single 4gb 680 FTW+ LE system the shadows being right off or maxed out doesn't cause my FPS to drop lower than 60, but as I said, the environmental slider being full left will make things seem a bit more sensitive when I roll around and look around, and will stay at 59 or 60 unless I get into a lot of gvs and cons and smoke combined, then it'll drop 20 fps or so. Even my 3930k system with 2 of those 680's in SLI will see a drop to 50 or so FPS in the same circumstances with the slider full left. I really don't see a whole lot of difference in how the game looks, it's fantastic still with it 2 notches right, so I just leave it there, and leave shadows at max as like I said they don't seem to have a major cost for my setup. Normally I would just switch shadows off as well, as I flew for years without them and they kinda bugged me at first, but I've been recording a lot and want to make films, and I want them to look as pretty as possible, so on they stay for now. I've never really taken note of it, but can you tell if the shadows are on or off in film? I'll check that out today sometime I guess.
I wonder when Intel will release their new CPU's for the socket 2011, it's gotta be soon. Be nice to see some benchmarks with this new video card Chalenge is speaking of with one of those.
big edit: Chal, it's a 1000$, not 3000$ retail for the Titan, must have been a typo. I was like, wth, nobody except for an extremely select few will pay that for a retail gaming card, that's more than some of those crazy high end graphic designer cards haha. It's actually cheaper than the 690 was that I bought, and 100$ cheaper than the 680 SLI setup I replaced it with. Good times, I can't wait until they come in, my SLI cards are already spoken for.