Tech: Driver Dosado

Even when your powerful new graphics card is installed in your PC, the work doesn't end there. Modern computer games are so ruinously complicated that there are inevitably problems with the interaction between software and hardware. The device drivers that help to bridge this gap are essential for the video card to even function, so it's nice to know that the manufacturers update them.

The problem is that new drivers come out literally every week. While it doesn't take much time to download and install a new driver, it gets pretty irritating when every new game release has some buggy interaction with your current video card driver. And we're not talking graphical glitches - a driver incompatibility can make it impossible to run a game.

Sometimes, ATI and Nvidia (the two 800 lb gorillas of the graphics card industry) even get caught "cheating" with their drivers - releasing stuff that's specifically optimized for a single popular program or 3D benchmark. I guess it's comforting to know that the competition for drivers is essentially no different than the Tour de France.