What am I missing by not upgrading NVIDIA drivers?

J

JoeSchmoe007

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Sep 21, 2011
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My build:

Intel i7-4770 CPU with stock cooler (not overclocked)
Asus Z87-Plus motherboard
Asus GTX650TIB-DC2OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST graphics card
32 GB of Kingston KHX16C9P1K2/16 RAM (4x8GB) - from Asus compatibility list for this motherboard
2x2TB internal hard drives - WD Caviar Black WD2002FAEX
Pioneer BDR-2208 Blu-ray drive
SeaSonic M12II 620 Bronze 620W power supply
CoolerMaster N400 case
Windows 7 x64

I built it about 7 months ago and at the time I looked at NVIDIA forums and read something like this: "All drivers after 314.22 are crap. Some of them cause Firefox to freeze." Since I use FF as my main browser I just installed 314.22 and everything has been 100% stable except this one known problem that I learned to avoid: Amazon Prime Silverlight Player causes graphics card crash when monitors go to sleep

From time to time I would check NVIDIA drivers forum and it seems that stability of drivers didn't improve. I don't play any games, so game compatibility and performance improvement is of no concern. What is of concern is system stability and security when running "regular" desktop applications such as Visual Studio, MS Office, Firefox, etc.

Recently I received a notification from Windows Update that newer graphics drivers are available from Windows Update. Since the version for new drivers was not clear I hid this update.

It is difficult to judge if complains about latest NVIDIA drivers apply to my card (GTX 650 Ti BOOST) as well because the search function in NVIDIA forum is rudimentary.

So my question is: what, if anything, am I missing by sticking to 314.22? Were there any security patches in the drivers released since then (I haven't seen anything in release notes)? I am not concerned about game performance/compatibility improvements.
 
You may/may not get a better optimized card with new drivers. Usually better though.

On another note, I grabbed e most recent driver for my 780 sli and now chrome flickers hardcore to e point I uninstalled it. I have not reinstalled it yet, but will later today.

edit: So i disabled SLI and no more chrome flickering... wierd...
 
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um you can simply look at the release notes to see you are missing out on tons of performance improvements. and DONT update from Windows update. update from Nvidia and do a clean install and only install the stuff you need.
 
Protip: 9/10 people on the Nvidia forum don't have a clue. Upgrade your drivers.
 
tosgamer said:
If it works and you don't play games. Just leave it as is.
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Pretty much this. If you're not playing games, and there isn't a specific feature you want from the newer drivers, then just keep what you have until you run into an actual issue with them.
 
I don't understand this mentality of "why should I update my drivers..." blah blah blah

In my 20+ years of high end gaming PC building, I have ALWAYS made sure to run the latest firmwares/BIOS/drivers and have never had an issue. Why WOULDN'T you want to run the latest versions?
 
In late 2012, a gaping security hole was found in Nvidia drivers and made headlines in tech news, and was not fixed until January 2013 with the 310.90 drivers. It is unusual to hear about security patches for video card drivers, but they are likely done all the time - just quietly.
 
Sprayingmango said:
I don't understand this mentality of "why should I update my drivers..." blah blah blah

In my 20+ years of high end gaming PC building, I have ALWAYS made sure to run the latest firmwares/BIOS/drivers and have never had an issue. Why WOULDN'T you want to run the latest versions?
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surely you're not naive enough to think that just because it's the newest doesn't mean it's the best. I mean the whole point of drivers is to fix issues well if the newest was always the best then there wouldn't be issues to continually fix. Sometimes those issues can impact you and sometimes they can't so it's always best to wait and see what the feedback is first.
 
If you don't game and don't have problems there is no reason to until you have an issue.

For my own curiosity: Why buy a 150-200 dollar card if you don't game?
 
stealthy123 said:
If you don't game and don't have problems there is no reason to until you have an issue.

For my own curiosity: Why buy a 150-200 dollar card if you don't game?
Click to expand...

I used to do software development in the field of 3D graphics and may want to dabble in it again. Also interested in using GPU for high performance calculations.
 
JoeSchmoe007 said:
I built it about 7 months ago and at the time I looked at NVIDIA forums and read something like this: "All drivers after 314.22 are crap. Some of them cause Firefox to freeze."
Click to expand...

This is a 560 / 560Ti problem. It should not affect your 600 series card. Upgrade!
 
xorbe said:
This is a 560 / 560Ti problem. It should not affect your 600 series card. Upgrade!
Click to expand...

Even then they have fixed this issue with newer driver sets. Had the issue with my 460 rig and now its flawless.
 
If you're not playing games then i'd say, "if its not broke then don't fix it". Generally newer drivers introduce fixes for new PC game releases, but since you're not gaming that is a non issue for you.
 
I usually stick with the driver that works for me, unless I see a fix on the notes for something I play or was looking for. If I do a clean windows installation, I use the newest available driver since I'm starting from scratch. If you don't have any problems, no need to upgrade. One thing that annoys me about the latest Nvidia drivers is the lack of the control panel task bar icon unless you install the GeForce Experience (or updated to the new driver without clean installation over the old one). I'm not sure I need a program to "optimize" my games for me as I like to do it myself. Still, that program is at least way less intrusive than AMD's new "Raptr" software, I really hate that thing.
 
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