When To Upgrade Your Video Card Drivers

[Tolwyn]

Here's a simple decision matrix on when you should upgrade your video card drivers, in the order of importance.

As always, this is from experience dealing with Nvidia only, and why and how new WHQL drivers get released.

 

And sometimes it's not a good idea to upgrade.

 

• Upgrade if the drivers address to fix or improve performance in a game that YOU play. nvidia gets reports from developers of many games and they prioritize based upon many factors. The popularity of the game, the developer's agreement with nvidia to write their software that caters to nvidia over ATI, etc., or a performance issue has been identified that is significant enough to make the game "dead in the water" or significant impact.
  • In essense, nvidia writes code that addresses a speicific issue. A bandaid. Sometimes this can actually have an impact on other games that otherwise worked great before the release of the driver you're upgrading to. There's about a 40 day window where they have to ensure that the drivers meet WHQL specifications (and sometimes there are no changes that affect Windows but they still "politically" have to go through this process). Sometimes it's addressing an OpenGL instruction, or a wrapper that INTERCEPTS a specific instruction and handles it a different way. Many times, the NEXT driver update backs out the new instruction because the game developer has fixed THEIR OWN CODE that prompted the need for nvidia to issue a driver update in the first place.
     
• Upgrade if you have stability issues with the specific card that you own (read the readme from nvidia).
  • Otherwise, you're going through the motions of installing software that you don't need and software that isn't necessary and offers absolutely NO VALUE to yoru gaming experience. In some cases, fixes addressed by nvidia to solve a problem with a new game can create problems for a game that you've been playing for years.

But you don't have to take my word for it.
If your computer isn't broke, don't fix it unless there is a bona fide reason to do so.

Especially if you have a graphics card that is more than about 16-20 months old. Do your research. Evaluate the read me from nvidia. Do you NEED the new drivers? Are you gaining any performance gain or compatibility benefits?

[FoolTrottel]

Well, what if upgrading drivers is one of the few fun things one can be exited about as in ""HEY, THERE'S SOME new stuff !!"

 

I mean, we only got 1946, what's new there?

 

Just downloaded and installed the latest 'n' greatest for my 970 

[Tolwyn]

Well, there probably isn't any "new stuff." Kinda was part of my point.

 

If a higher version number is your thing... knock yourself out.

The notion that you're getting the "greatest" is a you thing, not an nvidia thing.

Latest, maybe. Greatest? Not necessarily.

[FoolTrottel]

It ís indeed a 'me' thing ... 40hrs a week I get to use and support lotsa pc's that are 'standardized', all the same shift, no fun there in trying stuff ... it's all 'managed'...

 

On my own pc, I get to do my own thing ... 

 

Mind you, it's not a tool for me, it's more, it's also a toy 

[Tolwyn]

Fair enough. Desktop Support has its own rewards.

I'm just providing information for the OTHER folks in the squad that might not need to go through any undue pain.

[Jabo]

+1 Tol, although I think if anything I'm probably a worse case than FT, tinker, tinker, tinker, tin...oh carp...where's me Windows disk? etc