Moore Threads has published a new driver for its MTT S70 and S80 gaming graphics cards, which aren't rivals for the best graphics cards yet. The new driver reportedly delivers significant performance gains in four games, such as 20% in Grand Theft Auto V. Although this driver update doesn't provide quite the same improvement as the company has in the past, it's still a significant boost for China's best domestic gaming GPU.
Grand Theft Auto V is the star of the new driver with its 20% gain in performance, but ~10% improvements were also made in three other popular titles: Lost Ark, Valorant, and Assetto Corsa. Although the MTT S80 could barely compete a year ago with even cards from the early 2010s, successive driver updates may put the card at least on par with today's lowest-end GPUs, such as the RX 6400 and Arc A380.
There were also swathes of bug fixes in the driver, tackling a problem that has plagued Moore Threads's gaming graphics since launch day. The new driver has 34 bug fixes, resolving crashes, blue screens, rendering issues, and unresponsiveness. By contrast, AMD only had seven bugs in its latest driver, and Nvidia had only three. Although many bug fixes are a sign that there are many bugs to fix, it seems Moore Threads is resolving them diligently, as it releases about one new driver a month.
While hardware is undoubtedly vital in gaming hardware, drivers are also a crucial component. Intel is another newcomer to gaming graphics cards, and it has had to issue tons of driver updates to get its Arc GPUs up to scratch. It's common to see Intel doubling or even tripling performance in specific titles with new drivers, as the company did with its latest driver on Thursday. It's probably safe to say that similar performance boosts are likely for future Moore Threads drivers, though given Moore Threads's smaller size, it might not be able to match Intel's pace.
Moore Threads has lately seen hard times, with U.S. sanctions on its graphics cards potentially causing a round of layoffs at the Chinese GPU designer. The company has maintained a steady pace of one monthly driver update since the layoffs. Still, the performance gains in this month's and last month's driver updates pale compared to November's, which saw much more significant gains and added support for over a dozen titles.
