That’s not that ridiculous. If you’re frequently playing new games at launch (probably a bad idea for different reasons), then latest drivers often contain optimizations and fixes for specific games.
I do out of habit and 99% of the time it has zero downsides and occasional positives. It only borked a game and required rolling back one time that I can remember.
I have a friend who is far more careful about doing their updates because they have frequent problems. Not sure why we have such different experiences.
Usually it’s hardware difference and compatibility between components. Small pieces with subtle variations and imperfect manufacturing often create unpredictable instability.
lol, I remember when I started playing No Man’s Sky, I made a post on reddit pointing out that more recent nvidia drivers fucked up the game’s framerate big time, like, if I was standing still and moved the mouse around, the framerate would tank. With a previous driver (416 or older), the whole game was butter smooth. I kept playing with that driver until the game had an update that forced you to have newer drivers. Performance was still shit.
I think there’s a limited number of optimizations that can be made and eventually some settings will conflict the old with the new at a fundamental level.
And support for older or weaker hardware tends to get tossed to the wayside because it’s likely not the main money maker for them.
“Installing my driver” is a cultural relic from old Windows days where it wasn’t automatic; one needed a CD/Floppy or whatever to get your printer or ATI card working. It was good practice. Hence tons of “driver cleaner/updater” kind of shovelware exists to capitalize on that mindset.
…These days, Windows update (or the Arch/CachyOS package repos in my case) auto-update all my hardware with zero fuss. IDK why so many stray from that, unless they encounter a bug that was specifically fixed in an update.
Whatever driver Windows hands you for your nVidia/AMD card is likely to be hilariously out of date. If the driver it gives you is the one with the bug that’s bugging you, you won’t have a choice.
That you should always keep your graphics card updated to the latest drivers, especially Nvidia
Windows or linux?
On linux I know that could cause lots of issues.
On windows I’m not aware of any reason not to keep the graphic drivers updated with nvidia.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/game-developers-urge-nvidia-rtx-30-and-40-series-owners-rollback-to-december-2024-driver-after-recent-rtx-50-centric-release-issues
That’s not that ridiculous. If you’re frequently playing new games at launch (probably a bad idea for different reasons), then latest drivers often contain optimizations and fixes for specific games.
I do out of habit and 99% of the time it has zero downsides and occasional positives. It only borked a game and required rolling back one time that I can remember.
I have a friend who is far more careful about doing their updates because they have frequent problems. Not sure why we have such different experiences.
Usually it’s hardware difference and compatibility between components. Small pieces with subtle variations and imperfect manufacturing often create unpredictable instability.
lol, I remember when I started playing No Man’s Sky, I made a post on reddit pointing out that more recent nvidia drivers fucked up the game’s framerate big time, like, if I was standing still and moved the mouse around, the framerate would tank. With a previous driver (416 or older), the whole game was butter smooth. I kept playing with that driver until the game had an update that forced you to have newer drivers. Performance was still shit.
I think there’s a limited number of optimizations that can be made and eventually some settings will conflict the old with the new at a fundamental level. And support for older or weaker hardware tends to get tossed to the wayside because it’s likely not the main money maker for them.
“Installing my driver” is a cultural relic from old Windows days where it wasn’t automatic; one needed a CD/Floppy or whatever to get your printer or ATI card working. It was good practice. Hence tons of “driver cleaner/updater” kind of shovelware exists to capitalize on that mindset.
…These days, Windows update (or the Arch/CachyOS package repos in my case) auto-update all my hardware with zero fuss. IDK why so many stray from that, unless they encounter a bug that was specifically fixed in an update.
Whatever driver Windows hands you for your nVidia/AMD card is likely to be hilariously out of date. If the driver it gives you is the one with the bug that’s bugging you, you won’t have a choice.