Valve Nears Nvidia Graphics Driver Support, Crucial for SteamOS Expansion

Valve's SteamOS has made significant strides in expanding its reach as a gaming operating system, but two major hurdles remain. One of those hurdles is Nvidia graphics driver support, which Valve developers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Jeff Leinbaugh say they are actively working on.

'Yeah, we're working on it hard,' Griffais said in an interview. 'It's definitely at the top of our list.'

The team has made some progress, enabling Nvidia drivers for certain generations of GPUs on SteamOS, but performance is still a concern. According to Griffais, there's a 'little bit of a rift' between the current driver and the state-of-the-art.

Getting Nvidia support right will be crucial for Valve's goal of expanding its user base. The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows that 72.88% of Steam users still use Nvidia GPUs, and having them working reliably on SteamOS could lead to a significant increase in player migration from Windows.