Do Macbooks receive nVIDIA driver updates?

We don't get updates. That's that. Really should have put this in the appropriate forum, too.

nachtxeule said:

I used to update my drivers for my graphics card on windows on a monthly basis, here however... I don't know what's going on?

care to explain

Click to expand...

As far as I know, Apple will deliver graphics updates if necessary.

Since there's a lot less demand for it, drivers aren't updated at the same rate - not sure how it works on the windows side of things, though I imagine Nvidia and Ati are exclusively responsible for driver maintenance and push out updates regularly to give a "value added" proposition for their products. For Mac versions, Apple writes all the drivers for Nvidia cards (and manufactures them too, or at least puts Nvidia's parts together) and collaborates with Ati on their drivers. So the drivers are only updated when there's a specific need or OS update regularly scheduled - when Apple feels like it. Apple's never paid a whole lot of attention to GPUs, though I have hopes that this will change with their OpenCL initiative and the movement towards GPGPU computing.

Graphics card drivers will show up in Apple Software Update. Sometimes they're by themselves but usually they're hidden in bigger updates. For instance, 10.5.6 had updated drivers for ATI cards in the aluminum iMacs.

PS-If you're running Boot Camp, update the drivers just like you used to: manually downloading from the manufacturer's site.

Tallest Skill is not a moderator, and he does have a point - this is the Mac Pro forum, not the MacBook forum.

But to answer your question, updates on the OS X side of things are often rare to nonexistent as far as NVIDIA and ATI go. They do happen, yes, but they're not weekly/monthly events like they are on the Windows side of life.