hacks, workarounds, and edge cases

That’s always what I thought when they release a new driver for a specific game. I’m like “seriously? Do they check the executable or something?” Yes, yes they do.

Other things that have been broken by one update and fixed by new drivers were shadows in Oblivion not rendering and Arkham Asylum crashing at a specific moment if physx was anabled.

Meanwhile I'll go 6mos to a year before even thinking of updating my 1080ti and never once have issues.

^This. I can tell every time my pc updates by the fact that nothing ever works correctly anymore.

Literally just downloaded video drivers yesterday due to this, and I have the vast majority of auto updates turned off for windows.... Every update moves me closer to switching Os entirely.

On Windows, a lot of motherboard vendors would ship their own update utility, however the issue is that in 9 out of 10 cases, that utility would also install some useless garbage on the side, and hog the resources, while not really doing anything. In other cases, Windows itself can provide you with updates, for the devices it recognizes

On Linux? Update packages and reboot.

On Windows? I think Nvidia is updated by Windows Update, but you'll have to manually download the online updater tool for AMD cards. There's really no good method to automate it on Windows other than clicking on the pop-ups, which I find equally hilarious and embarrassing.

Nvidia and AMD both have programs that'll let you know when you have a driver update. It'll handle it automatically past you needing to click 'go', from what I remember(I haven't had a Nvidia gpu in a few years.) For AMD it's called Adrenaline, and for Nvidia it's Geforce Experience.

I don't find that anything but GPUs really need regular driver updates.