Chinese-made gaming GPUs get up to 120% FPS boost — new drivers and stability fixes for MTT S80 and S70 cards

(Image credit: Moore Threads)

Today, Chinese GPU manufacturer Moore Threads released new v290.100 drivers for its MTT S80 and S70 GPUs, boasting impressive performance improvements in select titles (via ITHome). The latest update addresses commonly reported bugs and stability issues across games and applications such as Unigine Valley, Rhinoceros 3D, and several local applications. The updated drivers are available for download on their website and support Windows 11/10 and Linux.

Driver v290.100 promises optimizations for A Plague Tale: Requiem, Death Stranding, Infinity Nikki, Super Power Continent, The King of Fighters XV, Sonic Forces, Steel Rats, Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact. Bear with us, as a few of the aforementioned names may have been mistranslated.

Moore Threads claims a massive 120% increase in average FPS in A Plague Tale Requiem, followed by a 50% performance boost in Death Stranding. Let's be honest: these aren't mainstream titles anymore; some are incredibly niche. However, the two big shots from HoYoverse could draw some attention to these GPUs in the local market, though exact specifics or numbers haven't been shared.

MTT S series new drivers — (Image credit: Moore Threads)

The new drivers also fix several reported issues, including display anomalies in Rhino 8.11, crashes in Shadertoy, Rainbow Six: Siege, Devil May Cry 5, Unigine Valley, and several problems associated with the PES control center. However, a few unresolved bugs remain: unresponsive behavior in Blender and stability issues with local software.

Since launch, Moore Threads has been hard at work delivering driver optimizations for its GPUs. Truth be told, we aren't sure if we should take these numbers at face value. Despite these cards' raw horsepower, software, and certain architectural limitations are likely holding them back. Market share makes a huge difference, as it wouldn't make sense for developers to expend valuable resources to optimize their software for these GPUs.

Even Intel's Xe-based Alchemist suffered greatly from lackluster driver support and an immature architecture at launch. Battlemage mostly fixed these problems, with the Intel Arc B580 standing as a great budget GPU, rivaling Nvidia's RTX 4060 and even the potentially soon-to-launch RTX 5060. The silver lining is that due to the 16GB frame buffer, these GPUs reportedly show "excellent" performance in AI inference tasks. It's suggested that DeepSeek's R1 model runs inference not on Nvidia's Hopper/Blackwell chips but on Huawei's homegrown Ascend AI accelerators. Still, despite these recent strides, it might take years for Chinese hardware and software to match Western technology.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

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21 Comments Comment from the forums

bit_user

The article said:
boasting impressive performance improvements in select titles
When the base performance is too low, the improvements don't deserve to be called impressive. In spite of all the improvements thus far, these graphics cards have still performed abysmally, last time we saw any actual frame rates posted.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/moore-threads-mtt-s80-gets-dx12-support-in-beta-driver-two-years-after-launch-but-3d-performance-is-still-lags-the-gtx-1650It's telling the article mentions no absolute frame rates. If it did, I'm sure we'd see there's nothing impressive about them.
Reply
Jabberwocky79

Go China! Let's get these puppies imported to the US... would finally be a GPU I could afford! :LOL:
Reply
stuff and nonesense

bit_user said:
When the base performance is too low, the improvements don't deserve to be called impressive. In spite of all the improvements thus far, these graphics cards have still performed abysmally, last time we saw any actual frame rates posted.

It's telling the article mentions no absolute frame rates. If it did, I'm sure we'd see there's nothing impressive about them.
“Since launch, Moore Threads has been hard at work delivering driver optimizations for its GPUs. Truth be told, we aren't sure if we should take these numbers at face value. Despite these cards' raw horsepower, software, and certain architectural limitations are likely holding them back.”

Finance, time and market share are the 3 parts that matter going forward.
Can they afford to develop the next generation based on what they have learned/are learning from the current parts?
Can they execute in a timely manner?
Is the Chinese (guessing they are aimed at the home market for now) market going to adopt these parts and pull developers into optimising for them?

While the base hardware may not be exciting or impressive that they are learning is. If the finance holds up then within a generation or 2 they could be competitive. They have a real target to shoot at in the existing Nvidia/AMD/Intel GPUs. They aren’t shooting at a nebulous 10, 20, 30%.
Reply
bit_user

stuff and nonesense said:
Can they afford to develop the next generation based on what they have learned/are learning from the current parts?
Hard to say, since they're based on IP from Imagination Technologies. Now that Imagination is on the ropes and looking for a buyer, will that pipeline keep flowing, or will they need a clean break and need to look elsewhere (Verisilicon?) for their next GPUs?

If they do switch IP providers, how much software will they have to rewrite? Probably most of it will need to be replaced.

stuff and nonesense said:
While the base hardware may not be exciting or impressive that they are learning is. If the finance holds up then within a generation or 2 they could be competitive. They have a real target to shoot at in the existing Nvidia/AMD/Intel GPUs. They aren’t shooting at a nebulous 10, 20, 30%.
Seems to me like you'd want to know more about them, before trying to argue one way or another.
Reply
artk2219

Jabberwocky79 said:
Go China! Let's get these puppies imported to the US... would finally be a GPU I could afford! :LOL:
If you want to look up the benchmarks on these, i think you'll find you'd rather pickup a decent used gpu, like an RX 580 or something lol. Those would offer much more performance, with far fewer bugs, for less money. Those Moore Threads cards need a lot of work.
Reply
Eximo

Jabberwocky79 said:
Go China! Let's get these puppies imported to the US... would finally be a GPU I could afford! :LOL:

You could make a solid argument for an Intel B580 to replace your 1080 Ti. Right around a 3060 Ti in terms of FPS depending on the game.
Reply
beyondlogic

Eximo said:
You could make a solid argument for an Intel B580 to replace your 1080 Ti. Right around a 3060 Ti in terms of FPS depending on the game.

i mean there may be a better version around the corner if rumours are to be believed of a 24gb version.
Reply
jlake3

I mean... better to have these improvements than not, but 50-120% performance boost in specific titles isn't reflective of general driver optimizations, that's reflective of something being broken. My Arc A380 had a few big, big performance leaps, but these were all in things where initially it mysteriously under-performed compared to a GPU that it matched in other tests, and the big leap pulled it back into the range it was expected to be in.

beyondlogic said:
i mean there may be a better version around the corner if rumours are to be believed of a 24gb version.
Last I heard, that's believed to just be a workstation card using the B580 core.
Reply
Jabberwocky79

artk2219 said:
If you want to look up the benchmarks on these, i think you'll find you'd rather pickup a decent used gpu, like an RX 580 or something lol. Those would offer much more performance, with far fewer bugs, for less money. Those Moore Threads cards need a lot of work.
I was making a joke :sneaky:. I'll will most likely be picking up a 5080 in the next couple of months provided stock comes back.

My current options by preference (and in no way an indication of anticipated reality):
1) Prices of used 4090's dip below the 5080 price range and I grab one of those.
2) 5080s come back in stock and don't go up in price again, and I buy one.
3) AMD actually surprises us with a valid 5080 competitor and I go team Red this time.
4) The GPU market remains as stupid as it is currently, and I pick up a B580 to ride out the poop storm. (Oh, wait,... I forgot that I can't even get one of THOSE for MSRP either.) o_O
Reply
rluker5

Jabberwocky79 said:
I was making a joke :sneaky:. I'll will most likely be picking up a 5080 in the next couple of months provided stock comes back.

My current options by preference (and in no way an indication of anticipated reality):
1) Prices of used 4090's dip below the 5080 price range and I grab one of those.
2) 5080s come back in stock and don't go up in price again, and I buy one.
3) AMD actually surprises us with a valid 5080 competitor and I go team Red this time.
4) The GPU market remains as stupid as it is currently, and I pick up a B580 to ride out the poop storm. (Oh, wait,... I forgot that I can't even get one of THOSE for MSRP either.) o_O
If you don't have a window on your case there is this version: https://www.newegg.com/onix-odyssey-8346-00178-intel-arc-b580-12gb-gddr6/p/N82E16814987002 but it still costs $20 more than the LE I picked up.
But it's existence is an indication that they may be getting back in stock. B580 is interesting. It outperforms on some games and underperforms on others. At least Kingdom Come Deliverance is underperforming on mine and only runs well at 1440p. But it certainly is no 5080, you will need upscaling and reduced settings at 4k, and ray tracing still costs too much imo. 5080 has all that covered.
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