What do Video drivers do

[Beezle_Boss]

What do Video drivers do?

[juppy]

They basically tell the video card how to interpret the incoming data and turn it into what you see on the monitor.

[Beezle_Boss]

so they upgrade the video card to do better?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Beezle_Boss so they upgrade the video card to do better?

Sort of.
First they allow it to operate at all (thus the basic drivers that allow you to see the bios at POST ).
Windows generic drivers allow basic windows functions so you can see what you're doing as/after Windows installs/loads.
Specific instructions, the video drivers and their updates you're thinking about, enable the cards hardware past the basics, thus bringing it's full capabilities into play.
These can be altered as necessary, so yes they can improve performance.

There's a caveat here, if the manufacturer really judged wrong no driver updates will save the card and it's back to the drawing board to design a new one.