I spent years of my life annoyed at AMD for being totally negligent with its drivers. We’d spend upwards of six months waiting for something. Anything. Just a sign that things were actually happening behind the big red factory doors of Radeon. And then 2016 happened. Between AMD and Nvidia there were probably a good 50 or so drivers to download, each weighing in at hundreds of megabytes and taking painfully long to install. Usually just as you were sitting down for a nice gaming session.
Suffice to say the graphics card drivers battleground on which Nvidia and AMD have fought has never been more fierce. Nvidia wouldn’t let a AAA release go by without some form of GeForce Game Ready driver, and it wasn’t long until AMD hit back with its own. Now we even get a dedicated day one driver for Obduction, a game which has sold an estimated 55,000 copies.
I can’t be the only one a little bit bored of seeing the driver update notification pop up though. It’s got so much now that I just ignore it, resigned to updating once or month, or perhaps if a really big game I’m looking to buy comes along. Ah the back of my mind is a niggling thought though - what if this next driver makes my performance better is x game?
The problem is exacerbated because there’s been a number of high profile screw ups. GeForce memory has been nuked. Radeon fans have been obliterated. The fans, not the fans. Oh, you know I mean. Games have just stopped working. The old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ certainly applies here.
So it got me thinking, how do you handle your drivers these days? Is it all getting a bit too much? Do you have a tried and trusted driver you’ve never moved on from? Or do you grab the latest versions as soon as they’re out?
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If the driver meets one (or all) of the following:
A) A new game came out and I'm going to play it on Day 1
B) The driver has a fix or a SLI profile for a game I already own and play
C) The driver has a new feature I want to have (such as DSR or MFAA in the past)
D) The driver has offers a performance boost to the game(s) I play
If not - there's no need to update, naturally.
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Not that often, most of the time when there is a driver specifically for a game that I play and want to get better FPS on.
Now i was on the driver before last and i got significantly better fps in ACO with the latest one.
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only when i buy a new game. other than that whats the point to update the driver?
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Windows update does it automatically in Windows 10.
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Not mine. It simply knows better.
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Well, you have a supremely odd GPU, I'd expect infrequent updates.
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it depends is it worth it
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If it performs good with the current driver while playing any new games, i wont download, otherwise i do. Anyways i check for updates on daily basis.
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Completley forget it nowadays for 3 months or less,then decide to do it.
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Rarely. But only because I almost never have the newer games anyway, so there’s no point.
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old is gold
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Whenever it provides updates to the new game I am currently playing.
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Only if it gives a significant boost to my FPS.
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when i get bored of the notification :D
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every 3 or 4 months xD
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If it fixes something (in game or in windows, for ex. screen flickering that i had with the previous version i used with my 1060) or adds something new, then I'll update to it. otherwise i just stay with the current driver version I'm using
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I consider a few things before updating display drivers.
1: Does it offer any improvements for games that I own or plan to buy
2: Does it offer any improvements to general optimization like power usage or thermals
3: How well is it received by other users. Listen to their feedback first to learn of possible problems.
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normally I don't update drivers because most nvidia drivers screw up my version of Cyberlink Powerdirector if the driver isn't set properly
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Normally i'll wait until I need it for a certain game, even then I will wait to see if it is stable & no one is having any problems if all is well then I will update the driver, doesn't take a minute to re-search a driver have a good day
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Me, only when new game I bought need it. Depend on the needs.
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I don't update unless it's relevant.
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I like to try and keep up to date..... at times I'm a little hesitant though, sometimes new drivers will break things in older games, it's rare but it can and does sometimes happen....and this is true of both AMD and Nvidia drivers from what I've noticed.... so sometimes as long as my current drivers are working well with the games I play, well..... why fix what isn't broken?
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I rarely update drivers. For me, it's only an issue when I buy a new game.