Nvidia geforce experience drivers

[SouSkrt]

Hey, I heard a rumour that gpu drivers slowly killing the performance of the gpu, which I find convincing to make you buy new ones each couple of years

is that true? I know that nvidia themselves won't share such  information but yeah..

my question is: do I keep updating my GPU drivers as soon as they realease or I stop doing so.

[Zando_]

Bullshit rumor. It would be very weird to put in the work on supporting hardware for 7-10 years (Nvidia just cut Kepler driver support in 2021, and Kepler cards are old) while also making it worse on purpose. They'd just cut driver support sooner if they wanted to force an upgrade. Old GPUs are let down purely by being old, no malice on the OEM's part. 

 

I can't recall a confirmed example of planned obsolescence in the tech space, usually just folks assuming malice when surprise, old computer hardware just seems slower over time because we keep making all our software harder to run in the interests of it looking better or doing more things. 

[SouSkrt]

4 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Bullshit rumor. It would be very weird to put in the work on supporting hardware for 7-10 years (Nvidia just cut Kepler driver support in 2021, and Kepler cards are old) while also making it worse on purpose. They'd just cut driver support sooner if they wanted to force an upgrade. Old GPUs are let down purely by being old, no malice on the OEM's part. 

 

I can't recall a confirmed example of planned obsolescence in the tech space, usually just folks assuming malice when surprise, old computer hardware just seems slower over time because we keep making all our software harder to run in the interests of it looking better or doing more things. 

I agree, what about a 3080? same thing? can it last 10 years?

[Zando_]

14 minutes ago, SouSkrt said:

I agree, what about a 3080? same thing? can it last 10 years?

Yes. No. Maybe. Plenty of cards that old are dead, plenty aren't. I have a GTX 780 that I think is starting to show signs of either VRAM failure or overall chip degredation, it's 9 years old. My other, exact same model 780, completely fine other than a fan bearing going out. I have a used HD 4870 512MB in my 2006 Mac Pro, that's a 14 year old card. The original Nvidia GPU from that Mac Pro (16 years old) is fine as well, it just doesn't support Apple's Metal API (this is an example of just being old) so I couldn't upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan without changing it out for the 4870. 

 

Assuming no engineering oopsies along the way, GPUs usually live for a very long time, but it seems to be mostly luck of the draw whether they do or not, so not worth worrying about. Don't run your card outside of Nvidia's rated max safe temps (you'd need a really shoddy cooler or to stuff your GPU behind a pillow to be able to do this though) if you're worried, and use a quality PSU, that's about all the variables you can control. 

[SouSkrt]

4 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Yes. No. Maybe. Plenty of cards that old are dead, plenty aren't. I have a GTX 780 that I think is starting to show signs of either VRAM failure or overall chip degredation, it's 9 years old. My other, exact same model 780, completely fine other than a fan bearing going out. I have a used HD 4870 512MB in my 2006 Mac Pro, that's a 14 year old card. The original Nvidia GPU from that Mac Pro (16 years old) is fine as well, it just doesn't support Apple's Metal API (this is an example of just being old) so I couldn't upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan without changing it out for the 4870. 

 

Assuming no engineering oopsies along the way, GPUs usually live for a very long time, but it seems to be mostly luck of the draw whether they do or not, so not worth worrying about. Don't run your card outside of Nvidia's rated max safe temps (you'd need a really shoddy cooler or to stuff your GPU behind a pillow to be able to do this though) if you're worried, and use a quality PSU, that's about all the variables you can control. 

Okey, but do I keep updating my gpu drivers? nothing will happen? it doesn't die slowly?

[Zando_]

Just now, SouSkrt said:

Okey, but do I keep updating my gpu drivers?

Usually yeah, unless a driver version is known to have bugs in a game you commonly play, then wait for a fix before updating. 

1 minute ago, SouSkrt said:

it doesn't die slowly?

Why would it? It will die slowly, but every thing and person on this planet does that. Heck, the sun itself is dying slowly. 

[Mick Naughty]

You dont gain anything from updating unless its directly affects a game you are playing, in most cases. The games updates can potentially change the fps more than gpu updates. 
Modern warfare 2019 for instance. Kept "optimizing" it and lost 100 frames over the 3 years.

[Chiyawa]

6 hours ago, SouSkrt said:

Hey, I heard a rumour that gpu drivers slowly killing the performance of the gpu, which I find convincing to make you buy new ones each couple of years

is that true?

Well, partial. Here's why:

 

As each new GPU release, they will have new technology and new feature. Drivers that release usually update and optimised the new GPU architecture, but the old one will likely only have security patches. Because old GPU doesn't receive more optimisation and feature update, they soon will fall out from their performance even though they are still very capable. Of course, many of the times as new technology comes up and old technology became obsolete, some games may only design for new technology. Old technology will need some workaround to do what new technology can do, but it often adds overhead and requires more processing cycle to do, taxing the GPU core even more, and in the end, old GPU seems sluggish.

 

Similar with iPhone case where the iOS 'deliberately' drain the battery of the previous generation phone, it is actually one of the security feature that causes the battery drain because the old processor doesn't have the dedicated module to handle the instruction efficiently, which result the CPU to work extra hard which drain the battery more.