Driver and DLL juggling *spawn*

[Silent_Buddha]

Lol what a hot mess.

Yeah, I already hate driver juggling with my 1070 depending on what game I want to play, now there's also DLL juggling for DLSS? I'm kind of glad I don't have an RTX card at the moment as this would drive me absolutely batty with the little time I have for gaming. The driver juggling is such a turn off that I just don't play some games rather than deal with installing the driver version that doesn't introduce rendering artifacts into the game.

On the plus side at least the DLL juggling is probably less painful that installing a driver just to play a game without artifacts.

Regards,
SB

 

[DegustatoR]

Yeah, I already hate driver juggling with my 1070 depending on what game I want to play, now there's also DLL juggling for DLSS? I'm kind of glad I don't have an RTX card at the moment as this would drive me absolutely batty with the little time I have for gaming. The driver juggling is such a turn off that I just don't play some games rather than deal with installing the driver version that doesn't introduce rendering artifacts into the game.

On the plus side at least the DLL juggling is probably less painful that installing a driver just to play a game without artifacts.

Regards,
SB

Zero need to "juggle" anything. All DLLs work, no issues with latest driver either. This DLL trick is for those who want an even better DLSS option - but in Eternal specifically DLSS isn't even needed to run the game with RT at 60 fps.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah, I already hate driver juggling with my 1070 depending on what game I want to play, now there's also DLL juggling for DLSS? I'm kind of glad I don't have an RTX card at the moment as this would drive me absolutely batty with the little time I have for gaming. The driver juggling is such a turn off that I just don't play some games rather than deal with installing the driver version that doesn't introduce rendering artifacts into the game.

On the plus side at least the DLL juggling is probably less painful that installing a driver just to play a game without artifacts.

Regards,
SB

Out of curiosity what games do you swap drivers for? I've a 1070 too and its never even occurred to me. Don't think I'm even running the latest drivers.

 

[HLJ]

Out of curiosity what games do you swap drivers for? I've a 1070 too and its never even occurred to me. Don't think I'm even running the latest drivers.

I wonder too because that claim was new to me.

 

[Dictator]

Out of curiosity what games do you swap drivers for? I've a 1070 too and its never even occurred to me. Don't think I'm even running the latest drivers.

It depends on the game - something that is Vulkan based and very modern, pushing the envelope, like doom Eternal will need the latest drivers since it uses Vulkan stuff only contained in the latest day-1 driver for the game.

I always recommend upgrading drivers to anyone with every new driver release if it is a gaming machine.

 

[dskneo]

Juggling drivers is a common practice depending on what GPU generation you have, or what game you play the most.

You see this all the time across reddit with Nvidia users, with several graphs comparing performance between many driver versions in specific games or specific GPU generations. My observation every time I trip on those posts are that newer drivers have a tendency to negatively impact performance on older GPUS or older titles. I've seen graphs recommending drivers sometimes a year older than then newest version.

So, very common.

 

[CarstenS]

I didn't (have to) do driver juggling with my old GeForce cards and I don't have to do it now with my Vega56. Last time I've stumbled across this was some opengl32.dll swapping 10+ years ago.

 

[DegustatoR]

Can't think of even one instance where I had to do any "driver juggling" on any GPU for at least dozen of years.
There are some game specific bugs sometimes in which cases you're better off staying on an older driver until the bug is fixed. But that's not "juggling".
The notion that Nv drivers "negatively impact performance on older GPUS or older titles" is just BS. No benchmark in existence have ever proven this to be the case.
I tend to think that some gamers just have an OCD when it comes to drivers.

 

[PSman1700]

Swapping display drivers? Thats...... along time ago

 

[dskneo]

The notion that Nv drivers "negatively impact performance on older GPUS or older titles" is just BS. No benchmark in existence have ever proven this to be the case.
I tend to think that some gamers just have an OCD when it comes to drivers.

its factual. In fact, almost every time a new driver appears, benchmarks are made to compare versions.

If this is news to you and others here, it doesn't make it false. That is not how the world works.

 

[DegustatoR]

its factual. In fact, almost every time a new driver appears, benchmarks are made to compare versions.

And now you will provide the benchmarks you are talking about which will prove these facts.

If this is news to you and others here, it doesn't make it false.

See, I happen to check these benchmarks on a regular basis and I know that it is false.

 

[dskneo]

And now you will provide the benchmarks you are talking about which will prove these facts.


See, I happen to check these benchmarks on a regular basis and I know that it is false.

in the past 5 years i've seen the benches, there were instances where new drivers lowered performance on older titles or olders gpus. The benchmarks are out there. So one of us here is lying their faces off.

 

[dskneo]

For the past 2 years, driver stability, performance, and recommendations, have been made by this guy https://www.reddit.com/user/RodroG/posts/ on the r/nvidia sub, available for anyone to see. There are others.

But anyways, here is one of the examples where a new driver is not recommended compared to previous ones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/allbenchmarks/comments/do3nvt

Here is a recap of the conclusions for this specific case

Built-In Game Benchmarks Notes
DirectX11:

• Overall FPS performance was on par with prior recommended version (436.48) with certain significant improvements in terms of frametime consistenty (AC Odyssey, FC5 & GRW).

DirectX 12:

• Although overall raw performance was fine or even improved significantly in one single test (GOW4), frametime consistency was overall worse than on prior recommended version (idem) with significant stability regressions in most tests (GOW4, MEx, SB).

Vulkan:

• Performance was on par with prior recommended driver (idem). No significant differences on SB (VK) tests.

DXR:

• FPS performance was fine but there was a significant stability regression in MEx (RTX).

Vulkan RTX:

• Q2RTX raw performance improved significantly but at the same time there was a significant regression in its stability.

Driver 440.97 Notes
Overall performance inconsistencies. While overall performance was fine in some scenarios (DX11 and Vulkan), there was still a high number of significant stability regressions in the rest of testing scenarios (DX12, DXR & Vulkan RTX) compared with prior recommended version (436.48).



Recommended Game-Ready WHQL Display Driver for Turing GPUs
Due to noteworthy performance inconsistencies and an overall and significant stability regression, 436.48 is still our recommended driver.
However, if you favor latest specific games optimizations, latest features, or are directly affected by any of the most recent fixed bugs, the recommended driver would be the latest instead.

Here is period of time from March to August where between the previous recommended driver and the new recommended driver, there were 4 or 5 releases.

https://babeltechreviews.com/geforce-452-06-driver-performance/






So that we are clear, this was DegustatoR stance on this topic:

 

[DegustatoR]

For the past 2 years, driver stability, performance, and recommendations, have been made by this guy https://www.reddit.com/user/RodroG/posts/ on the r/nvidia sub, available for anyone to see. There are others.

That's exactly what I call "driver OCD". There are so many dubious claims there that I won't even start dissecting them, and that's just three driver versions being compared.
Let me just tell you that a driver from 2019 tested on a 2080Ti is not a "newer driver" on "older GPUS".

So that we are clear, this was DegustatoR stance on this topic

I'm positive that everyone can read my posts without you constantly screenshotting them and inserting into your own.
That stance remains. Because, as it says, "no benchmark in existence have ever proven this to be the case".
And I'm saying this because I was looking into this myself - until I got bored because there were nothing to find there.

Edit: added more links since I was searching for them anyway.

 

[PSman1700]

In all seriousness, how many users are actually swapping drivers like that?

 

[DegustatoR]

In all seriousness, how many users are actually swapping drivers like that?

Thing is these results are pointless outside of a 100% controlled testing environment - which regular gaming PCs are obviously not. (And I doubt that the tests above themselves are done in such environment.)
In my experience OS (CPU vulnerabilities mitigations especially) and game updates have a much higher effect on performance than GPU driver changes - and these are either uncontrolled or impossible to control.
So unless you're doing a several driver versions comparison in a controlled benchmarking environment your results may have variations of different scale but that won't be due to drivers.
These reddit posts specifically showcase this with most of differences being well within what you'd expect from a run to run variation and minor changes can be a result of whatever really - background processes, ambient temperatures, game patches, OS patches, etc.

 

[PSman1700]

Its been awhile when i had to 'swap drivers', early 2000's for sure. If even that.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Out of curiosity what games do you swap drivers for? I've a 1070 too and its never even occurred to me. Don't think I'm even running the latest drivers.

If you mostly play AAA games then it's not likely to be something you run into as NV will generally ensure that things are correct in the latest AAA games and the most played AAA games.

Since I play a lot of AA and indie games which don't generally see attention by NV's driver teams, sometimes general fixes in the drivers for some game will negatively impact rendering in other games. since there isn't a per game driver profile for them.

Hell, this is the main reason I stopped upgrading to the newest drivers with each driver release. It was driving me absolutely batty in my most played games at the time (Warframe and GW2). In Warframe, for example, depending on the driver the player character would sometimes be translucent such that you'd see the world through the body. GW2 would have a similar rendering bug depending on driver version (not necessarily the same driver that would make Warframe render incorrectly) but would also sometimes introduce a different rendering bug (I've posted a screenshot years ago in one of these threads) where there would be blocks of "weird rendering" (I don't know how to describe it). At the time I had wondered if it was related to tiled rendering (it wasn't) on Pascal GPUs.

Anyway, when I'd upgrade to a newer driver, either rendering artifacts would go away or come back or new ones would be introduced. So I eventually just settled on drivers that worked well in those games and then I don't change the driver unless I need it for another game that I'd start to play.

And don't even get me started on bugs that different drivers introduce in Windows. They don't usually exhibit themselves until the PC has been used extensively. So that was fun finding a driver version that was both relatively bug free after extended use in Windows AND didn't have rendering artifacts in those 2 aforementioned games. And now, I just don't play a game if it shows artifacts since I don't have time to juggle drivers.

Hell, one driver was so bad that it would mess with my internet connection. Installing a different NV driver made that issue go away. Reinstalling that driver made the issue come back. Why that driver was messing with my internet connection? I have no idea why a GPU driver would need to even touch internet functionality. This was easily reproduced, so something with how that particular driver interfaced with Windows was doing some weird ass things.

That more than anything has me wanting to get a newer GPU. The hope is that maybe either a newer NV GPU wouldn't have so many driver problems or that AMD hasn't started having so many driver problems (I almost never ran into this with the Radeon R9 290, my last AMD GPU). But I don't know that I'd trust that they don't also have these issues now. Bleh.

Regards,
SB

 

[Phantom88]

Juggling drivers is a common practice depending on what GPU generation you have, or what game you play the most.

You see this all the time across reddit with Nvidia users, with several graphs comparing performance between many driver versions in specific games or specific GPU generations. My observation every time I trip on those posts are that newer drivers have a tendency to negatively impact performance on older GPUS or older titles. I've seen graphs recommending drivers sometimes a year older than then newest version.

So, very common.

It's not very common at all. At all. This is some absurd nonsense you might see from some console gamers on resetera trying to pretend he knows something about gaming on computers and trying to make it sound like its some nasa engineering thing to play on pc and proping up his console of choice.

The site you are mentioning is this one:

https://babeltechreviews.com/geforce-471-11-driver-performance/

Quite literally, the only one who tests drivers. The only one. Its a thing for that particular guy i guess. Under no circumstance is this a common thing that everyone does. In fact, looking at those tests, all of them, the worst case scenario is that one game out of three dozen might have 3 extra frames with the previous driver than the new one. Something to the tune of 123 vs 126. In one game. Nearly every time the results are margin of error. Juggling drivers is common ... = ))

 

[PSman1700]

This is some absurd nonsense you might see from some console gamers on resetera trying to pretend he knows something about gaming on computers and trying to make it sound like its some nasa engineering thing to play on pc and proping up his console of choice.

Guess you havent seen it all here on B3D. Some are claiming updating steam and windows is a royal pain (in 2021!).