Graphics cards: Drivers, tools and terms such as DLSS and more explained

In our special we explain some basic terms and things about software for graphics cards as well as important software-based processes for graphics calculation. On the one hand, it’s about driver software and the overclocking and fan tool MSI Afterburner, but on the other hand it’s also about terms like anti-aliasing, DLSS, FSR and ray tracing. We will now start directly with the most important software foundation for all graphics cards: the drivers.

Driver: The basic software

Only the latest drivers from AMD for Radeon graphics cards or Nvidia for GeForce graphics accelerators ensure largely error-free image calculation and optimal use of the graphics card performance for as many FPS (frames per second) as possible in the detail mode you have set. You download the drivers directly here at AMD or here at Nvidia – so if you have a Radeon RX 6600 from XFX or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti from Asus, for example, you should still look for the drivers directly with AMD or Nvidia and not with the manufacturer of the graphics card. The driver packages that you can download from AMD and Nvidia contain software for making various settings for the graphics card and games, as well as the actual drivers.

With the software you can set basic things, for example the resolution for Windows or whether the drivers – no matter what you choose in the game – should use certain processes. The software also offers other options – for example, you can record your current gameplay as a video.

Nvidia also has a large database of games with the GeForce Experience for which you can select optimized presets. The AMD graphics card software also offers many different features, including the option for users of Ryzen CPUs to overclock the processor.

We cannot go into all aspects of the software features of AMD’s and Nvidia’s driver packages in our special, as otherwise there would not be enough space for further topics. One of them is the question of what the actual drivers do exactly – because so far we have only informed you about the tool-like functions of the driver software.

There is a potential performance gain in some games through drivers if algorithms are optimized or even small obstacles are detected and eliminated.

Source: AMD

The actual drivers are only a small part of the driver package and are deeply embedded in Windows. They ensure that the graphics card can communicate correctly with Windows and the games. A look at the so-called release notes for the drivers, which describe the changes to the previous driver version for each newly released driver package, shows how complicated it is, what constitutes drivers.

You often read about performance gains for certain games, some of which also result in FPS gains in the double-digit percentage range. These can be optimizations, but also the elimination of errors that did not lead to image errors, but had nevertheless hindered the graphics card. Of course, AMD and Nvidia always communicate the positive FPS changes caused by the driver as improvements and not as bug fixes.

However, there are also clear driver errors that players can notice: fragmentation, black areas, unwanted gaps between objects, crashes or severe stuttering despite good hardware, as well as certain errors when using the driver software such as image errors with certain graphics cards when you use a surveillance Overlay enabled.