Question Downgrade WDDM?

[Asphodelus]

Microsoft trashed WDDM back in Windows 10 1803/version 2.4 and hasn't fixed it in the 3 releases since.

Since current versions of Windows contain old WDDM versions I can get around the issue by sticking with old pre-1803 drivers, but if this keeps dragging on I'll eventually have to upgrade my GPU (and thus driver) at some point. Thus, I'm wondering if there's any way to have an up-to-date driver + OS but force Windows to use old WDDM 2.3?

 

[Stuka87]

No, you cannot downgrade the WDDM. There is some backwards compatibility though back to certain previous versions.

What card do you have?

 

[Asphodelus]

I have a 1080 right now.

I'm thinking of upgrading to RTX 3000 or Big Navi later this year when they come out, but the idea of being forced onto a new driver and WDDM 2.6 is seriously giving me pause.Yet at the same time I can't stay on a 1080 forever so I'm wondering if there's any way out of this catch 22...

 

[Stuka87]

I have a 1080 right now.

I'm thinking of upgrading to RTX 3000 or Big Navi later this year when they come out, but the idea of being forced onto a new driver and WDDM 2.6 is seriously giving me pause.Yet at the same time I can't stay on a 1080 forever so I'm wondering if there's any way out of this catch 22...

If you play any games made in the last 2 years, you should want the latest drivers that will most likely have fixes and performance improvements for those games.

 

[Asphodelus]

If you play any games made in the last 2 years, you should want the latest drivers that will most likely have fixes and performance improvements for those games.

This is true for well-optimized AAA titles taking advantage of the latest technologies like DX12.

That said, I play a lot of games from smaller studios with little optimization from the developers and none whatsoever from Nvidia/AMD. Heck, I played a game last year (released in 2018) that ran on DirectX 9...

Brute forcing with more hardware is the only way I'm going to get more FPS in these games, so obviously I'm going to choose a driver on features rather than performance when I'm playing one of them.