The green team is so proud of its Nvidia GPU drivers, it recently released a video that details just how successful the Game Ready program is. Since it launched in 2014, Nvidia has published 150 drivers that support more than 400 different games. It’s so confident in its process that Senior Product Manager, Sean Pelletier, cheekily puts AMD – and potentially Intel – on blast.
Specifically, Pelletier boasts about the quality of Nvidia GPU drivers compared to its rivals. Since there are thousands of different gaming PC and gaming laptop setups running Nvidia hardware, the company says it conducts 1,000 tests per day across more than 4,500 configurations in order to ship drivers in a timely fashion. If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, he also highlights that this equals 1.8 million hours throughout 2021, which is more than 214 years of testing.
Jabbing at AMD’s penchant for releasing beta drivers before they’re Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) certified, Pelletier says “Nvidia does not release beta Game Ready drivers,” likening the process to the quality of early access games versus their final release.
Pelletier doubles down on the shade in an accompanying blog post, stating that “because the Game Ready Driver Program and our promise of quality relies on all of this work, we don’t release sub-par beta drivers with minimal testing, let alone multiple conflicting beta drivers forked from different development branches that support different games and products, which confuse customers.”
It’s early days for Intel, as we won’t know the quality or how quickly drivers release until Arc Alchemist is in full swing. At the very least, its GeForce Experience and AMD Radeon software (Adrenaline) competitor looks promising, as Arc Control doesn’t require users to log in to an account.
AMD, on the other hand, might not produce drivers as quickly and stagger releases with beta versions, but Videocardz notes that it ships desktop, mobile, and integrated GPU support in a single, convenient package rather than a potentially confusing split like Nvidia.
One thing’s certain: things are heating up in the graphics card space and Nvidia won’t be on the front foot forever. Day-one driver support offers an advantage, but AMD FSR 2.0 is on the way to challenge Nvidia DLSS graphics upscaling, and Intel XeSS will follow – both of which will have open source versions. More competition means more innovation, and us gamers will be the winners no matter what camp you sit in.