Nvidia Offers a Look at How It Tests GPU Drivers, Takes a Dig at AMD
Nvidia's latest effort to woo PC gamers to its graphics cards is focusing on the company’s painstaking efforts around GPU software drivers—and how the approach is allegedly superior to its competitors, including AMD's.
Nvidia published a blog post today that offers an inside look at how the company ensures its software drivers are optimized for the latest PC games. Through its GeForce Game Ready Driver Program, which started in 2014, Nvidia has been working with game developers through "nearly every stage of a game's creation” on driver optimization.
Software drivers are critical to ensuring a graphics card runs well with a PC game without causing frame-rate slowdowns or crashes. Optimizing the drivers can be challenging, especially since a company like Nvidia has to support the dozens of GPU models in use across thousands of different PC games.
“Game bugs, GPU-specific bugs, OS bugs, driver bugs, and more, can all cause a driver to glitch and crash, and it’s critical these are stamped out before the game’s release,” Nvidia’s Andrew Burnes wrote in the post.
To ensure a smooth release, Nvidia says hundreds of employees work to get GPU drivers ready for high-profile PC games on launch day. During the process, game developers will also work with Nvidia to exchange pre-release game builds and drivers to help stamp out errors.
“If necessary, we also work with Microsoft on operating system changes, and engine developers on changes that benefit the title in question, and all other games that might leverage that piece of programming in the future,” Burnes added.
In addition, Nvidia will rigorously test the drivers with each game across numerous GPU models, along with various CPU and RAM configurations. This has led the
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