Older 10 series graphic cards and new drivers

[Shomron 251]

Hi,

At a certain point can newer Nvidia graphic drivers (supporting RTX series) impact older graphic cards performance?

Obviously this question is for those who have experience with older generation cards.

I would want to stop upgrading at some point if this is the case.

[BlueStar 323]

I have a 1080 and upgrade it with each new driver from nVidia.  I don't know if it makes a difference, but it only takes nVidia a couple of minutes to do the upgrade so it doesn't hurt.  

[Bob Scott 7,745]

7 hours ago, Shomron said:

At a certain point can newer Nvidia graphic drivers (supporting RTX series) impact older graphic cards performance?

Not really...although the nVidia drivers come as a "unified" single package for a wide variety of cards, the installer does not install the same generic code for them all...it installs code that's specific to and optimized for that particular series of card.  So if there are changes that make a 2080 run better, but hobble a 1080, they'll be made when installing for a 2080, but won't be included in the code installed on a 1080 by the unified installer.

As a card ages, however, there are less and less optimizations targeted at the older generations, so updating the driver is less likely to improve much.  There are, however, sometimes important changes even for the older cards, particularly when Microshaft makes changes to DirectX or the Windows display driver model or some other low-level change most often seen when one their forced major updates installs itself.  And sometimes a new popular game will need special driver settings to work best (or at all) and those will be part of the updates as well.

So it's unlikely you'll harm anything by continuing to update...but some deference should be given to the sage old wisdom: "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

Regards

 

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

7 hours ago, w6kd said:

Not really...although the nVidia drivers come as a "unified" single package for a wide variety of cards, the installer does not install the same generic code for them all...it installs code that's specific to and optimized for that particular series of card.  So if there are changes that make a 2080 run better, but hobble a 1080, they'll be made when installing for a 2080, but won't be included in the code installed on a 1080 by the unified installer.

As a card ages, however, there are less and less optimizations targeted at the older generations, so updating the driver is less likely to improve much.  There are, however, sometimes important changes even for the older cards, particularly when Microshaft makes changes to DirectX or the Windows display driver model or some other low-level change most often seen when one their forced major updates installs itself.  And sometimes a new popular game will need special driver settings to work best (or at all) and those will be part of the updates as well.

So it's unlikely you'll harm anything by continuing to update...but some deference should be given to the sage old wisdom: "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

Regards

 

Perfectly stated!!!

 

[stans 707]

20 hours ago, w6kd said:

Not really...although the nVidia drivers come as a "unified" single package for a wide variety of cards, the installer does not install the same generic code for them all...it installs code that's specific to and optimized for that particular series of card.  So if there are changes that make a 2080 run better, but hobble a 1080, they'll be made when installing for a 2080, but won't be included in the code installed on a 1080 by the unified installer.

As a card ages, however, there are less and less optimizations targeted at the older generations, so updating the driver is less likely to improve much.  There are, however, sometimes important changes even for the older cards, particularly when Microshaft makes changes to DirectX or the Windows display driver model or some other low-level change most often seen when one their forced major updates installs itself.  And sometimes a new popular game will need special driver settings to work best (or at all) and those will be part of the updates as well.

So it's unlikely you'll harm anything by continuing to update...but some deference should be given to the sage old wisdom: "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

Regards

 

I am in complete and total agreement with your statement!

[lownslo 592]

On 4/27/2019 at 9:48 AM, w6kd said:

Not really...although the nVidia drivers come as a "unified" single package for a wide variety of cards, the installer does not install the same generic code for them all...it installs code that's specific to and optimized for that particular series of card.  So if there are changes that make a 2080 run better, but hobble a 1080, they'll be made when installing for a 2080, but won't be included in the code installed on a 1080 by the unified installer.

As a card ages, however, there are less and less optimizations targeted at the older generations, so updating the driver is less likely to improve much.  There are, however, sometimes important changes even for the older cards, particularly when Microshaft makes changes to DirectX or the Windows display driver model or some other low-level change most often seen when one their forced major updates installs itself.  And sometimes a new popular game will need special driver settings to work best (or at all) and those will be part of the updates as well.

So it's unlikely you'll harm anything by continuing to update...but some deference should be given to the sage old wisdom: "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

Regards

 

This post should be pinned at the top of this forum!  Well done!

Greg