Why do gpu's need constant driver updates?

[jondeker]

I've never really followed gpu's and recently looked at desktops and laptops. I found articles cheering that ati/nvidia are announcing program to update their drivers. Then there are articles going over performance improvements with driver updates. Then I see drivers sometimes need to be updated with new game releases to work. What's going on?

1. Why do drivers need to be updated constantly?
With any other hardware you just need the drivers to be spec compliant and then that's it, you forget about the drivers. So maybe a few updates when hardware is first released but this doesn't go on for years after.

2. If the gpu driver is compliant with api spec, say dx10, why do new games released a year later for dx10 still need to be updated?
I ask this specifically in relation to laptops. It's odd how games need updates and the driver issue is so problematic that a special program has to be made to address the issue. If you buy a new laptop and have good working drivers, why isn't that enough for any future dx10 to work without updates? Isn't avoiding this mess the point of the spec?

3. How are performance improvements being made in driver updates?
I remember long time ago in days of tnt/3dfx/etc, people used to cry foul when drivers improved fps, and tech sites would post screenshots of where details in certain parts scenes are lost. Has the situation changed now where legitimate optimizations are made or are game specific cheats still being made?

 

[HendrixFan]

I rarely update my drivers, usually only if I re-install windows or a game doesn't work (which isn't too often). I don't play games with performance as a primary goal, so I don't futz around with new drivers unless I have to. Drivers don't "need" to be updated constantly.

There are far more people out there playing games who don't even know what "installing a driver" means, than there are people who are constantly tweaking for performance which includes driver updates.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> 1. Why do drivers need to be updated constantly?

They don't.

> 2. If the gpu driver is compliant with api spec, say dx10, why do new games released a year later for dx10 still need to be updated?

Please give a specific example of a dx10 game that won't run without a driver update.

> 3. How are performance improvements being made in driver updates? ... Has the situation changed now where legitimate optimizations are made

Yes.

 

[NoQuarter]

3. How are performance improvements being made in driver updates?
I remember long time ago in days of tnt/3dfx/etc, people used to cry foul when drivers improved fps, and tech sites would post screenshots of where details in certain parts scenes are lost. Has the situation changed now where legitimate optimizations are made or are game specific cheats still being made?

These are legitimate updates. Performance boosts in driver updates are actually the driver team analyzing game code from a new game and wrapping some of the game's 3d functions to their own heavily optimized code or updating their drivers to run faster in the specific manner the game's 3d engine renders. This means driver updates don't actually make your card run faster, they usually just optimize a specific game's code the way the devs couldn't because they often aren't interested in optimizing code that close to metal. Sometimes these improvements effect a lot of games and sometimes only 1.

 

[AndroidVageta]

I always update drivers...dont see the point in bitching about it honestly...takes what, 2 minutes to download them then maybe 5 minutes or so to install and restart...

Also, I know, for me at least, that newer drivers fix bad code from games themselves...the new Splinter Cell game kept crashing and what not for me. I kept thinking to myself "when is a patching going to come out???" only to realize the problem was the drivers...updated to the newest ones and all problems went away.

 

[toyota]

I wait and see if a driver has any major issues before updating to it. heck sometimes I go several months without ever updating anyway. nice thing about Nvidia is you just install the new driver right on top of the old one.

 

[brybir]

I wait and see if a driver has any major issues before updating to it. heck sometimes I go several months without ever updating anyway. nice thing about Nvidia is you just install the new driver right on top of the old one.

I just install the ATI drivers over the old ones as well. I see some crazy posts here where people spend a lot of time uninstalling old stuff that reminds me of the good old days of computing. In any event, I have had a 8800GT and now my 4850 and in both cases I just download and install, I never undo anything before the new download.

I think even Windows Update now pushes drivers once they are WHQL compliant if you have that option selected, so I usually just let windows do it for me.

 

[OCGuy]

I am going with "they don't."

With the exception of Xfire/SLI, which take driver updates to fully implement the 2nd GPU.

 

[toyota]

I just install the ATI drivers over the old ones as well. I see some crazy posts here where people spend a lot of time uninstalling old stuff that reminds me of the good old days of computing. In any event, I have had a 8800GT and now my 4850 and in both cases I just download and install, I never undo anything before the new download.

I think even Windows Update now pushes drivers once they are WHQL compliant if you have that option selected, so I usually just let windows do it for me.

yeah but ATI officially says to uninstall old drivers first where Nvidia actually says to just install new driver right on top of the old.

 

[Scali]

GPU drivers are some of the most complex drivers around.
This results in two things:
1) Lots of potential bugs, which sometimes aren't found until many years later, when a certain game reaches a certain situation where something somehow just doesn't work as expected.
2) Making the drivers work is one thing, but making them work efficiently is even harder. So driver developers can spend years on perfecting various parts of the driver (and in the process might introduce new bugs, bringing us back to 1).

DX10 has made all this a lot easier though. A lot has moved to the DX runtime and to the application itself, making the drivers smaller and simpler.

 

[zerocool84]

Probably because there's millions of different user configurations and there are bugs to be worked out.

 

[Acanthus]

To spin an nvidia quote.

"GPUs are fucking complicated"

 

[Borealis7]

game specific tweaks to make the benchmarks look better...

 

[pmv]

I remember there was a time when nvidia seemed to bring out new drivers every week (in fact it felt like every day) and you had to keep trying new drivers (or going back to older ones) to get ones that worked properly with any given game. This was before ATI were a big rival, possibly in the dying days of 3dfx.

It doesn't seem such a big deal now, drivers seem to mostly work OK enough to start with, with updating drivers you just get small performance improvements. (Or they kill your card by stopping the fan!).

 

[LoneNinja]

I'm still running drivers from 4 months ago on this particular computer, but I have several computers and I rarely get around to driver updates on them.