Just a couple of days after publishing 378.66, NVIDIA released GeForce 378.72 Hotfix drivers. This fixes a bug encoding video in Steam’s In-Home Streaming, and it also fixes PhysX not being enabled on the GPU under certain conditions. Normally, hotfix drivers solve large-enough issues that were introduced with the previous release. This time, as far as I can tell, is a little different, though. Instead, these fixes seem to be intended for 378.66 but, for one reason or another, couldn’t be integrated and tested in time for the driver to be available for the game launches.

This is an interesting effect of the Game Ready program. There is value in having a graphics driver available on the same day (or early) as a major game releases, so that people can enjoy the title as soon as it is available. There is also value in having as many fixes as the vendor can provide. These conditions oppose each other to some extent.

From a user standpoint, driver updates are cumulative, so they are able to skip a driver or two if they are not affected by any given issue. AMD has taken up a similar structure, some times releasing three or four drivers in a month with only, like, one of them being WHQL certified. For these reasons, I tend to lean on the side of “release ‘em as you got them”. Still, I can see people feeling a little uneasy about a driver being released incomplete to hit a due-date.

But, again, that due-date has value.

It’s interesting. I’m personally glad that AMD and NVIDIA are on a rapid-release schedule, but I can see where complaints could arise. What’s your opinion?