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by flohofwoe 1866 days ago
At least for graphics drivers it's common that the driver applies tons of game-specific workarounds and optimizations, I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big.

Assuming that the same game-specific tweaking happens for CPU performance and compatibility doesn't seem like a far stretch.
4 comments
raverbashing 1866 days ago
Yes, and I agree this kind of thing "is ok"

But this isn't:

> it has a security descriptor allowing Everyone + Low IL R/W Access, and an IOCTL interface with absolutely no Probes/SEH, which yes, dereferences wild pointers.

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slimsag 1866 days ago
And being disguised as PCI driver doesn't help.. If it was called "AMD Game Optimizer" software, it'd be OK I think.
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Narishma 1865 days ago
> I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big.

I don't think so, otherwise it would be limited to graphics drivers. Since other kinds of Windows "gamer"-type drivers (keyboards, mice, motherboards, etc...) have also bloated over time, I think it's more about including useless things in them, as well as the use of inefficient frameworks like Electron.

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smolder 1865 days ago
You can buy other mice and keyboards, even the gamer type, without pushy dark-pattern crapware, if you avoid certain brands, e.g. Razer. Anyway, I think they're roughly right about gpu driver bloat. Release frequency has a lot to do with new app-specific optimizations, in between updates to support new hardware configs. As far as size, even without the GeForce experience-type stuff, the packages are still huge. They're supporting multiple generations of complicated devices with a sprawling set of features and APIs, but it's also those host hardware and app-specific tweaks building up.
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Wowfunhappy 1865 days ago
And of course, the games do the same thing, adding driver-specific workarounds and optimizations.
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rasz 1865 days ago
previous ATI attempt at "game-specific workarounds and optimizations"

before applying: https://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-q3/dm6-quaff-nocolormip-sh...

applied: https://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-q3/dm6-quake-nocolormip-sh...

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