V343 video driver vs v349

[bobbydazzler1985]

Hi on my nexus 9 it has v343 video drivers but i see the shield tv has v349. Is there much difference?

[zxcvbad]

Yep, quite a lot. Shield TV has v361, GLES 3.2 and basically everything that Dolphin needs. But don't expect Google updating Nexus 9 till the rest of Nexus devices get GL ES 3.2 supported drivers (Qualcomm)

[Nintonito]

The actual driver revision doesn't matter as much as the capabilities of the driver.  Nvidia doesn't do very much android game profiling so the drivers are mostly bug fixes and speed ups.  What matters more for performance is having full OpenGL vs. ES3.2, although the difference isn't so big now. Soon the gap will narrow,  most likely disappearing if an ES 3.3 ever releases.

[Sonicadvance1]

That driver doesn't support ES 3.2, it's only at ES 3.1 without all the extensions we want. So too bad.

[bobbydazzler1985]

I've even at a very futile attempt. Contacted Google about this last week.....I've yet to get a reply(surprise surprise)

[zxcvbad]

I've even at a very futile attempt. Contacted Google about this last week.....I've yet to get a reply(surprise surprise)

Hah, they likely won't reply to you. There might be a reason they're not updating N9 driver, especially that Pixel C appeared with v355. I'm assuming the only reason they don't want N9 to get GL ES 3.2 for now it's because their other product range (N5,N6,N6x, N6p) aren't ready, Qualcomm has to provide Google with commercial ES 3.2 supported driver (Qualcomm hasn't yet released one) so their whole Nexus range won't be on par if they take Nvidia driver for N9, likely that's why they refused to use Cuda and GL 4.5 on K1/N9. Pixel C I believe is a different family device, at least that's how they see it, hence they wasn't worried about shipping Pixel C with ES 3.2 support. Only theory, but it's just how it looks to me