The Truth About OpenGL Driver Quality

Posted by Unknown on Monday May 12, 2014 @04:01PM from the when-standards-aren't dept.

rcht148 (2872453) writes "Rich Geldreich (game/graphics programmer) has made a blog post on the quality of different OpenGL Drivers. Using anonymous titles (Vendor A: Nvidia; Vendor B: AMD; Vendor C: Intel), he plots the landscape of game development using OpenGL. Vendor A, jovially known as 'Graphics Mafia' concentrates heavily on performance but won't share its specifications, thus blocking any open source driver implementations as much as possible. Vendor B has the most flaky drivers. They have good technical know-how on OpenGL but due to an extremely small team (money woes), they have shoddy drivers. Vendor C is extremely rich. It had not taken graphics seriously until a few years ago. They support open source specifications/drivers wholeheartedly but it will be few years before their drivers come to par with market standards. He concludes that using OpenGL is extremely difficult and without the blessings of these vendors, it's nearly impossible to ship a major gaming title."

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Re:Nvidia blows too with drivers by exomondo · 2014-05-12 17:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Boy I miss PowerVR, S3, 3DFX Vodoo, and Matrox.
I don't, having to code for OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Rendition and MSI to optimally support all the different vendors on the market was a huge PITA. Though I do agree that the competition was so fierce that technology was bounding forward at a brilliant pace! ...and that part I do miss.