It is no leap to say that the standard of a graphics card comes all the way down to the standard of its driver. You would have a card that may play Cyberpunk 2077 at 8K 144Hz with full ray tracing, nevertheless it would not imply something in the event you get fixed stutters, crashes or corrupted photos. With that in thoughts, Nvidia launched a video that gives a glimpse into what goes into driver growth.
The video was posted on Nvidia’s Youtube channel (by way of Sweclockers). Its launch marks seven years because it started its Sport Prepared Driver program.
One of many illuminating sections of the video talks about how a lot work goes into testing and verification. Nvidia spent as much as 1.8 million hours of testing in 2021 and conducts as much as 1000 assessments per day on all kinds of various {hardware} configurations.
Nvidia talked about the way it would not launch beta drivers, (which hasn’t at all times been the case), whereas giving its rival AMD a jab on the identical time. “As a result of the Sport Prepared Driver Program and our promise of high quality depends on all of this work, we don’t launch sub-par beta drivers with minimal testing, not to mention a number of conflicting beta drivers forked from totally different growth industries that assist totally different video games and merchandise, which confuses prospects.”
PC drivers, and graphics card drivers specifically are amazingly superior items of software program. In contrast to a console, which is a closed system, PC graphics playing cards should work on numerous {hardware} mixtures, with totally different working programs, and software program installs as effectively. And on prime of that, every sport requires its personal optimizations.
Nvidia says that its newest drivers include over 25 million traces of code which is outwardly much like the quantity of code within the flight programs of a modern-day fighter jet.
With out correct testing, a gamer will expertise a lack of efficiency or consistency, latency spikes, crashes or glitches that may smash the expertise. The Sport Prepared program is designed to ship day one stability and efficiency. There’s nothing worse than having to attend for a driver replace to repair a identified bug.
Nvidia (and AMD too) deserve credit score for the quantity of labor that goes into producing an excellent high quality graphics driver. The web has an extended reminiscence and if a brand new AAA sport or graphics card comes out, the PR backlash may be immense if the motive force is beneath par. Is that this a contributing issue behind the delayed release of Intel’s Arc playing cards? Such a serious launch calls for a cultured driver from day one.
1.8 million hours is quite a lot of testing. In case your dream is to play video games all day and receives a commission for it, Nvidia seems like an excellent place to work. Second solely to PC Gamer after all!
