Does nvidia downgrade their old gpus by drivers?

[Joongi Baek]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/831639/nvidia-is-deliberately-downgrading-kepler-gpus-performance-in-favor-of-maxwell-/

I've heard numerous posts of nvidia downgrading their old gpus to promote their new one.
Is that true? I hope radeon doesn't do that.

 

[Gam3r01]

No, its not.
Some features are pushed quicker to newer cards, but they would hurt themselves more so if they did that.
One of the points brought up was a 970 out performing a 780Ti, well thats been true since launch.

 

[thor220]

They don't downgrade their old cards per say but they do reduce the performance of those cards once the new gen comes out. For example, GameWorks doesn't work well on the GTX 700 series because it relies heavily on tessellation, something that only Maxwell is good at. They also don't release performance improvements for last gen cards either.

Contrast that to AMD where the 7970 GHz edition, a 3 generation old card is still receiving performance improvements and is equivalent to a 280x. Ironically that card has better DX 12 support than any Nvidia card out right now so it could very well last a great deal longer. 3 GB of vRAM really helps it in modern games where the best card Nvidia had out at the time (680) only had 2 GB of vRAM.

AMD just designs it's cards to last longer. Just look at the GTX 970 vs the R9 390. The GTX 970 is good at two things, overclocking and 1080p gaming where the textures aren't too large. Games with larger textures or any resolutions above 1080p and it's no longer worth the money. As times passes the R9 390 will simply gain a larger a larger lead merely by the fact it has double the vRAM.

 

[Joongi Baek]

Thanks thor220. You saved my day.

 

[thor220]

Thanks thor220. You saved my day.

No problem at all. If you want to know more about what I just explained AdoredTV (YouTube) does very good analysis videos on YouTube.