> old GPU > 3070 Is my 1050Ti a fossil then?

Agree that dry paste/dust would have an effect, but I’d argue that most people who are experiencing a slowdown of performance over time would be due to bloatware/background processes on their PC. I know so many people who have systems that haven’t been formatted in years, and would have so much crap running in the background… maybe a video on how to clean up an old windows install could be the culmination of this series?

It probably won't make a huge difference, but there are older drivers available for the 3070 for Windows 10. Version 465.89 from March 30, 2021 is the oldest still available for download. I'm assuming this is because Windows 11 officially released almost a year after the 3070, in October 2021.

Hey Jay! I just wanted to say that I appreciate these videos about saving money with PC parts. Driver updates, re-pasting GPUs, real world ram speed tests, all things with the intention of how to get the best out of our stuff without forking out cash if we don't need to. Would be interested to see more videos like this! I was wondering how much would replacing stock case fans with Noctua/BeQuiet fans effect temps/performance per dollar.

I always wait a week or two before going to the latest nVidia drivers. Sometimes the latest releases have some undesirable effects so I just read user feedback before installation.

this is the VIdeo I have been wanting for so long, see benchmarks of a GPU over its lifetime.

Appreciate the extra work on this Jay!

"No product is designed to last forever" isn't a valid argument for planned obsolescence. It's when products are intentionally designed to last only a short period of time or caused to reach end of life prematurely. No, some bugs or issues with a software update is not planned obsolescence. If said update bricks your device or causes it to irreparably function worse and the company doesn't admit wrongdoing or do anything to fix their "mistake" THEN yes, it is. It is also pretty telling that old things were 100% built differently and built to last much longer than they are now. New printers go kaput in a couple years while some old printers in offices and whatnot are STILL going with the only maintenance required being a bit of a kick if it starts complaining a bit.

Good video mate, always wondered about performance improvement in drivers over time

One of my friends has a 1650 (iirc), and when he played elden ring he had a lot of lighting glitches around water, causing him to dub one cave "the rave cave" We realized he was still using the stock driver, so installing GeForce experience (and the latest driver) fixed it and boosted his 1% by a decent amount. YES, UPDATING YOUR DRIVERS ARE IMPORTANT, but you can likely live without updating for a month or two!

Really glad you brought the hardware age into this discussion, I was actually writing a post about that being part of the problem while listening to you and had to delete it... This is probably something that most people don't think about. That and if you are going to complain that the problem is a driver (or some other change) if you didn't test immediately before and after the change and under the same conditions for both tests.

Are you planning to do the same for AMD card users??

If I still had any older hardware I think that would be more useful to test this theory instead of just 1 generation back. I'd be curious to see if the results with something older like a 1080 Ti or 2080 Ti were any different.

It is always a good idea to somewhat regularly stay up to date, they also add in security patches as GPU drivers are vulnerable as well.

The only time I ever downloaded any "bad" drivers was shortly after DOOM Eternal came out. NVIDIA put out an update that did something very bad to Eternal and I had to roll it back. Other than that, I stay updated with zero problems.

Ty for this type of content! Real FAQs

Thanks, guys! Very informative video.

Thanks for your efforts the results was interesting.

I remember some months ago there was an Nvidia driver boosting Vulkan performance by almost 10%. 5-7 on average and that was the difference between unstable and locked FPS on an emulator I was running. Update your drivers bois, it help more than just the recent titles.

Dude, the melting JTC logo is probably the dopest version you've made. You should use it more, i friggin' love it!!

The previous 2 driver updates screwed my 3080 over for months, but the newest driver finally solved the stuttering and lag issues I was having in all games. I thought I was done for but now we’re back 😅

Awesome video! Great information!

Thank you Jay

Thanks for this. The only thing about planned absolesence is in my eyes is the hardware and not software. But that's besides the point of this vid. Good that you pointed it out.

I've never felt like they slow them down on purpose. Thanks for helping to prove it.

Given how much space drivers take up and how buggy GeForce Experience is in installing new drivers, I've literally been thinking about this topic for weeks! Thanks, Jay!

Thanks jay, we definetly need more content like this Maybe try an older laptop next

Congrats on 4 million subscribers!

i have severe OCD and i can't help myself but install the "new stuff" to "keep my PC updated" i haven't ever noticed any performance loss

thanks jay this is really cool

For Intel Arc you definitely should

I think replacing thermal paste every couple of years on both cpu and gpu is a must to keep temps as low as possible which will reduce thermal throttling and increase performance.

I've had external devices in the past where I've kept much older driver revisions simply because they worked, and so long as they continued to work I continued to use them. And when friends had issues with similar devices I would give them the older drivers and most of the time it would fix all or most the issues they were having, with other issues being fixed by simply tweaking a couple of the software settings.

There is exactly one time drivers mattered for me. Without updated drivers Armored Core 6 had some absurd menu bug where the menu just cycled constantly at rapid speed. As soon as I updated drivers it went away. I then built a new computer and forgot to update my drivers, and had it happen again. After updating, the problem went away.

Every morning I have a routine which is I check for any Windows updates and graphic card updates and I always do them. Never had a problem that was big enough to be a concern or was not got fixed with in a few days, but nothing that stopped me from playing or using my machine. I will say however I am not part of the windows beta program. But I always do the Nvidia updates as well.

I got one of the melting connector shirts and love it

I even had the thermal paste thing happen to a pretty modern card. Bought a 3070 used and it ran terribly hot. Changed the thermal paste and now it runs pretty cool with fairly low fan speeds. That probably was a 15°C or so difference - with a card that only even launched 4 years ago. Same thing when I bought a 980Ti two years prior. The thermal paste actually looked really good when I removed the cooler so I feared that the seller already changed it and there's no improvements to be gained - but I changed it anyways and dropped an impressive 8°C. And I didn't use fancy thermal paste - just a standard tube of cheap Arctic MX-2 that I bought 2019 before the 3070 even launched xD

Thanks for the video. It would be interesting to have the 1% or .1% shown too. My guess is that there you may see some tangible improvements, given how those will cause a stutter-like feeling when the frame rate goes down temporarily.

I have 3070 laptop and did a few tests with drivers and it rly did get around 4-6 more fps in some cases. I think the last one was Alan Wake 2

Hi Jay, Great video! Do you think that updating drivers on top of the older drivers over and over again without the use of software like DDU, can also cause lower performance on newer drivers? Do you always use DDU prior to installing new drivers?

The 0.1% and 1% low frame rate numbers, if they were logged and then included in the graphs, for all of the game benchmarks, could have shown substantial improvements in some games.

A 3 year old is not nearly old enough to drive, and that's a fact.

I do update the driver for my GTX1070 Strix every 2 or 3 releases. On a card that old I doubt it really matters, more or less proven by the performance that has been the same for the past years. The only reason I keep updating is that sometimes drivers come with new features that even my old card can use and I assume every update also comes with security patches and that's never a bad thing to keep up to date I guess

Was an AMD driver a few months ago that caused a bit of hitching in darktide, fixed it with the next driver release. I always tend to stay one version behind in case of misbehaving. Intel's GPUs are a great example of drivers improving performance over time.

Just for Funsies, I would love to see this same test done with AMD drivers. I often see people say that AMD drivers are bad and rarely improve. Regardless, thanks for doing videos like this, I find this stuff fascinating.

Highly recommend waiting a week or so on nvidia drivers unless you read the driver notes and it fixes something you need. Too many times I updated immediately and then had to safe boot to revert to old drivers due to no display. Mayne because I'm overclocked, YMMV

Super informative, thanks Jay and the team! Any chance of doing something with Mobo BIOS as well? I'm not sure how much there is to gain but they must update things for a reason, right?

I just repasted my gpu and seen a huge improvement, the hot spot was down 30 c and the gpu was no longer throttling. The paste from factory looked exactly like in the video with only about half covering the die.

Those old 980ti's still rock... i've been surprised about mine, although i have newer GPU's. I mean... they are OLD - but still works great at fhd or qhd at newer games. I also have a 1070 somewhere, which i tested in a similar machine. It was not even close, though both were at 100% GPU usage.

The biggest thing I noticed when updating from a release driver to a recent one is less hitching or that frame rate drop when moving from a small room to a big open area not so noticeable with the video cards now but back in the days with crossfire and sli you could see the difference with the newer driver more so with even number of cards like 2 and 4 but running 1 or 3 cards that low dip was less more so with 3 cards. But for me nowadays I do updates when they come out if the game running fine and I am happy I just do the update after my gaming session

I relized yesterday that I was using drivers from 2020. Safe to say I was missing out on some new hardware accelerated functions.

I did some thinking on the original subject from your previous video. I bet they had the GPU overclocked with at least power/temp sliders on the first video, then ran the same test after install (which can resets those sliders).

Are you planning a video on Nvidia's new beta app that replaces their control panel and experience app? Maybe including some tutorials for effective use? I installed it to play with it ... and its so far pretty impressive.

Whenever a new games doesn't perform well the first thing I do is check if there's a new driver. I did this up until just earlier this year with my 980ti. Worked every time, not even kidding. Plan to do the same with the 1090ti I have in the new system. Any big game that's had issues on my system instantly runs better with an update :)

I have 0 experience with desktops but for laptops there are a few games (and benchmarks) where you will get better performance going back to the 529 driver because they locked the power slider in Afterburner after 530. That has largely been overcome now but for a few months it was better to hold off.

Im waiting for the water box video !!!! I want to either buy singularity water box or the mo-ra3pro. Would be nice to see a comparison on cpu temp, water temps, and how long it takes for water to be at steady state. 🤔

Probably you mention it (I have less retention than a Gen-Z), but compatibility issues! More than once I had to update the driver to be able to play the game.

Since you brought up DDU, can you make a video showing the process of using DDU and talk about what circumstances a user would want to do so, cheers!

My insignificant 2 cents lmao I don't think people forget I think they are afraid, something is gonna break, after the hard work they put into personalizing their performance. Restore points are the bees knees. Thanks for the vids! I appreciate the way you present information.

Best thing to do is just read patchnotes for drivers like amd do , to known if you have specific gpu and it can have some issues/bugs

I would be interested in seeing an old cpu or like entry level cpu (intel XX 600K) when the card launch with original drivers and latest drivers. My guess is all of this is that newer drivers have a bigger impact on cpus than older driver. For example they could have optimized for AVX512 but your entry level doesn't have it. (just a for instance thing)

It would be interesting to compare the Intel Arc launch driver against the final pre-Battlemage driver, when it comes out. Jut to see how far Intel has come.

9:04 Jay describes paste pump-out correctly, and his go to paste is still KPx... Paste designed for short LN2 runs (KPx) do not to freeze and crack at -140C. In a daily driver PC LN2 paste will probably pump-out in a year or two, at most. Use noctua, NT-H1/NT-H2 or thermal grizzly, Hydronaut for a paste that will last 5-6 years. thermal grizzly, KryoSheet is a, use once thermal pad that will last the life of the device.

@Jayztwocents thank you for this video. Finally I can just link people to this instead of repeating myself 🤣🤣🤣

I think ReBAR was added in a later driver which would improve performance in some games

For someone who used to work in a computer shop, apart from the performance of hardware, drivers were the most important thing. You can make the best device, if the driver is flakey, a pain, causing you to run around to get the best working version etc, it's still crap. It would not be hard for hardware manufacturers to keep older driver versions on their servers. They don't take much room, and if someone wants a particular version why not ? And it's not so much about performance really, it's more about if the manufacturer gives you what you want. What I would like : 1) Just a driver without anything else 2) driver with some application that lets you change options 3) no having to sign up or such 4) no advertising for some game or other feature I don't care about 5) THIS ONE : IF YOU UNINSTALL A DRIVER IT UNINSTALLS EVERYTHING AND PUTS YOUR PC IN THE STATE IT WAS BEFORE INSTALLING THE DRIVER. This has been particularly an issue if you install a video card from another manufacturer's chipset and you have to install their drivers. UGH. Is it that hard to track which changes you made and undo them ???

If you forget to install your RAM drivers, the LEDs on your RAM modules don't stop flashing when you put your computer into sleep mode.

I firmly believe that the anecdotal evidence of driver obsolescence is the fact that over time newer games utilize more and more resources and it's not typical for people to be playing the exact same game at it's original launch state months and months or even years later. Either that or the games that they play are updated to use more features available on some hardware which can cause performance issues where it appears that same game is playing worse than it was originally on the same hardware.

Could do a video on thermal paste how long to change and what happens when you leave it for a amount of time

Also, in some cases, like Battlefield 3 where every game update required new drivers, it sometimes could be worked around by renaming nvapi64.dll in the system32 folder so the game is unable to detect the driver version and launch anyway. But in other cases not renaming it back to it's original name will cause trouble with games like GTA V. 🙂

Speaking of cleaning out dust and re-pasting everything. My 2080 super hydro copper needs that...

I would like to see one based on Driver updates VS overclocking with GPU tweak. I have the RTX 3060 Dual OC edition and I downloaded GPU tweak but I have no idea how to use it correctly.

bios updates seem just fine tbh i do those to quite often as a 7800x3d owner my Asus B650 E-E has been the most flaky part of the build it is getting better though last update was real great haven't had a crash since some stability updates there was also the whole toasting 7800x3d's a bios update fixed it so could also be bad not to

It would be really awesome if you could do the same for a 2080, 1080 & 980 to see if any of the older generations are affected. I know it's quite a bit of work but it would really solidify your point 10 fold!

This is my experience personally, and I by no means imply this happens for everybody. But, for me, updating my graphics drivers always caused more problems than it would solve. I would always remain on the same version that worked until something broke or became unstable, and then I update. I developed this methodology because I would update more regularly in the past, and it would only break my games, break shadowplay functionality, and other odd quirks. I've always been in the boat of, if it works, leave it alone. But if it's broken, I know the first fix to hook up.

I think if you add std deviation to the graph would help understanding the line of what is and what is not in the margin or error

This should be fun

Clean install for the win.

It would be interesting to see what the 7700XTX was like on the older drivers to ones now. I bet they have an even bigger improvement.

updated drivers also include / incorporate new technology software wise, that the card still can handle

I haven't been a blue to log into gforece experience for 3 years out of spite to that requirement so I'm 3 years out of day on my 1070ti and it still works with modern games...

LOL tight bends included... WolfieColada!

Well with the new changes to the Nvidia GPU app it will be far easier for a Nvidia card to get auto driver version check Also 12:23 you should update your bios too, either for performance improvements or literally prevent your motherboard from frying your CPU

You don't really need to plan obsolescence for a product that will by its nature become obsolete. electronics and technology in general is something that is constantly improving which makes the older devices irrelevant without the need for intervention. Planned obsolescence is still there but not in high end products its more like the budget tvs that break as soon as the 1 yr warranty expires or cheap mice/keyboards. Maybe in some of the lesser known manufactures for graphics cards but when the chips and drivers all come from one of 3 companies who get paid plenty for producing the chips everyone needs in the cards the things that would seem more like planned obsolescence would be poorly made boards maybe cheap caps or VRMs premature failure not underperformance.

Important to note that, for gaming older titles at least, it can really depend. I had to use a driver from 10+ years ago to get AC Black Flag to run, it just wouldn't start with newer drivers. Very awkward.

Now you have to do a bios update performance video 😊

I've seen some instances where performance had regressed a little due to a driver update, but those cases are extremely rare and if the average happens to come down more than likely the 1% and 0.1% lows increased over previous. That said, the vast majority of the time newest drivers are best. What would be really interesting to see is taking a GPU or two that is 2-3 generations old and doing some extended testing of games over time. So something like a GTX 1080 Ti and/or an RX 5700 XT. Do launch drivers, "game update" drivers, and then latest drivers for various titles. Pick a 2017 game or two, 2018 game, 2019, 2020, etc. and show the performance uplift or even functionality of your various potential Day 1 experiences vs. the uplift you get to enjoy today. It's rare that I don't update to the latest GPU drivers when they're available simply because I like having bugs fixed and performance improved. Almost always is the case that more things are fixed than broken when a new update comes out.

Jay question for u is it better to ddu and revo your drivers for your gpu every so often to remove crap or just updating everything without removal ???

My fps dropped a lot on AMD gpu when AC Origins came out, i had to roll back drivers to get better results, there was almost 10 fps difference in the same game on same settings and PC, I had similar issue in RDR2 back when game launched, I tend to not update drivers if games are running well. As they say, if it's not broken, don't fix it

I thought planned obsolescence is in relation to new and more pricey GPUs having slow and half capacity memory vs where they should be. Not drivers slowing things down, just new 4xxx mid-high end GPUs unable to play some modern games correctly cranked up from lack of memory.

Certain games ran awful at launch with stuttering and frame timing issues and alike, and a driver update fixes that almost every time. So yes, they're almost always worth doing. But they can break certain games too. So you get a big change in the new game and it gets "fixed", but then a game that is 5 years old now starts stuttering or crashing etc.

I want to live in a world where a 3070 is the oldest GPU in your fleet still in common use. Our media center just got 'upgraded' to a 1070TI when my workstation retired it, and there's still a 970 still kicking around the house somewhere.

In Fedora the kernel's are so new older drivers will not compile sometimes. I've had to fallback several times and download a new driver.

I load the majority of my games through Geforce Experience so I'll always update to the latest driver as soon as I see it also. These days I don't think I've ever had a driver update nerf any titles I play but I would hope the purpose of them is to get better performance!

I stuck to an old driver because the newer one used to make Firefox crash sometimes on my 1050 if using hardware acceleration

Well sometimes drivers are important. They make the biggest difference if you're having issues with either the older ones or the newer ones and you either update or roll back.

The driver slowdowns I've seen are more for retro cards in the GeForce 3, 4, and FX series as covered by PhilsComputerLab. Not sure about the cards in between then and now though lol

Me, I only install newer graphics drivers when the driver I have is older than a newly installed game itself. And then, it’s rarely the latest and greatest. I check the latest version’s Nvidia forum topic, and install the version that posters most commonly revert to, AKA the latest *stable* version.

Wish this video was 3 weeks ago. I updated my 2070 super to the newest drivers, and started to get sync issues while streaming videos and the audio getting out of sync. As soon as I went back to a driver from a few months ago, no issues while streaming videos. Granted I am not a gamer and its all editing. I am planning on a gpu upgrade soon though for editing purposes.

I think that an RTX 30 series card is still pretty new. People tend to think that nVidia is boycotting old series cards through drivers (like the GTX 10 series for example).