We’ve told you before that you should keep your graphics drivers up-to-date if you’re a PC gamer. But how much do they actually increase performance? Linus Tech Tips does a little experiment to find out.
When NVIDIA and AMD update their drivers, they aren’t just fixing bugs or adding little features. Often, they’re increasing performance — sometimes dramatically, especially for the latest games. That means you can get a serious performance increase just by clicking that “update” button.
Linus Tech Tips tested an old NVIDIA GTX 480 with four different games and five different driver versions from the past four years. Some games had 10 per cent better performance while others (like The Witcher 3) saw a 30 per cent increase after a couple years. That’s pretty phenomenal.
After a few years, those performance increases start tapering off, but if that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will. (It’s also one more reason to buy games after they have been out for a year or two — not only will they be cheaper, but they will perform better!) We wish they’d included an AMD card for comparison, but we imagine AMD follows a similar path — after all, driver updates are one of the best ways AMD and NVIDIA compete with each other after a card has been released. Check out the video for more, and go update those drivers!
Then vs Now Video Card Drivers [Linus Tech Tips (YouTube)]
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