NVIDIA: How we make drivers and why we don’t release poor quality betas

NVIDIA posted a video in which he illustrates how it makes Game Ready Drivers which publishes the release of more or less important video games and the debut of new GeForce video cards. Game Ready Drivers, first released in May 2014, are the brainchild of a very complit is strict aimed at ensuring the maximum performance and stabilityboth during gameplay and in interaction with the operating system.

The US company claims that the Game Ready includes over 1,000 different tests on a large variety of titles already launched and on the way. This is equivalent to “over 1.8 million hours of testing in the solo2021“.

How do NVIDIA drivers work? First, there are two modes of execution, one called “user mode” and another “kernel mode”. Games run in the former, with limited access to key system resources, while “kernel mode” gives full access to system and hardware resources.

Drivers for NVIDIA video cards have components that work in both modes. The “user mode” part of the driver communicates directly with the game, while the “kernel mode” part has the task of managing the final communication with the GPU. The latter is a fundamental part of the experience because the existence of problems affects performance, sudden crashes and bugs.

From a performance standpoint, NVIDIA works to ensure that the average frame rate is as high as possible, without neglecting factors such as the minimum frame rate and frame timethat is the time of reproduction of an image, in order to achieve a game experience without stuttering, without those sudden blocks of rendering that do not favor maximum fluidity.

Reduce the latency of the entire fundamental rendering pipeline in this case, in order to transform the inputs given with the mouse and keyboard into on-screen actions as quickly as possible. Finally, NVIDIA analyzes the established of its own drivers to avoid crashes while gaming, graphics bugs or other problems.

To do it the company works closely with the game developers themselves, in order to provide a solid driver from “day one” to make the game work with dignity. “Prior to our Game Ready Driver program, NVIDIA and partners had separate workflows for optimizing and publishing games and drivers independently,” said Sean Pelletier, senior product manager at NVIDIA for the Game Ready Drivers program.

“Through our Game Ready Driver process, we have established a regular cadence for swapping game builds and drivers prior to launch. We work together to find optimizations and fix problems. This ensures that both the game and the Game Ready drivers deliver the best quality and performance at launch. “

NVIDIA also continues to optimize drivers even after the title has reached the so-called “Gold” stagewhich is the final build released on debut, working with tools like NVIDIA Nsight Graphics that allow you to fine-tune aspects – such as the length of a given API call – that can have a major impact on performance and stability.

Finally, NVIDIA test drivers in the field by tapping into a huge range of systems with different CPU and GPU configurations: in total we talk about desktops and notebooks for over 4500 different combinations, dating back to 2012. It is from these tests that NVIDIA extrapolates the settings, applicable with a single click from GeForce Experience, able to offer what the company believes to be the best ratio between graphics quality and performance for your specific configuration.

NVIDIA points out that does not publish Game Ready beta driverssubjecting them to the final verification of the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (for this reason the defined stable drivers are called WHQL). “Unlike other GPU manufacturers, NVIDIA certifies every single driver”, it is reported in the video, but in the text on this page the company increases the dose against what at the moment its only opponent, AMD: “We will not release Poor beta drivers from minimal testing, not to mention several conflicting beta driversbetween them derived from different development branches that support different games and products “.

Since 2014, NVIDIA has released over 150 Game Ready drivers with support for more than 400 games. In 2021 alone, it distributed 20 drivers with support for 75 titles and for the future the company assures that it “has no intention of slowing down”. What is your experience with drivers from NVIDIA and those of the competition? Let us know in the comments.