GeForce and Radeon software releases are not "random updates" [sic].
They are usually (like 90% of the time) tied to a major game release. The updated drivers are optimized for the new title(s). The release notes for both companies spell this out in very clear language. Elden Ring? New graphics card driver. Hogwart's Legacy? New graphics card driver. Baldur's Gate III? New graphics card driver. Get it?
Occasionally there's a new GeForce/Radeon driver that supports new hardware. 3070 Ti graphics card launch? New graphics card driver.
If you didn't acquire any of those new games and your current driver works fine with your existing hardware, you can probably skip the new update until you feel like upgrading at your leisure. Still you really need to read the release notes because both companies provide fixes for other issues, some of them game related, others could be security related or general graphics fixes.
Windows can have a regular monthly release in the form of Patch Tuesday because it's not directly tied to a specific software title release nor is it tied to specific hardware. It's worth pointing out that Microsoft could release their Windows updates without a regular fixed schedule, much like Apple does with macOS/iOS updates. But even Apple releases major upgrades to coincide with new hardware (iPhone, Mac, etc.).
Patch Tuesday is done to make IT staffers' lives easier. There is nothing new about this.
In fact, for major consumer software, I'm pretty sure that Windows is the only one with the fixed schedule. Everything else is as needed.
Yes, I get it, but I don't like it. And they are random from my point of view, since they don't follow a schedule. And a driver that needs to be optimized for each major title is a problem in itself, wouldn't you say? Those games take years to develop, so planning a driver release to support them shouldn't be a last minute thing, it could be released 2, 3 or 4 weeks in advance, before the game is released, to align the driver release with a monthly driver update schedule.
About "you really need to read the release notes" to see if it's just a game specific update or a bug fix. Yes, this is a problem. Why should I have to do that? In case it's a game specific update this should be automatically solved by the game developer and NVIDIA. Game starts, checks for the required driver, notifies me that I need to update my driver. Simple.
For the rest of the people that don't have that game, don't notify them to update. Only provide emergency out of schedule updates when there is some security bug or other serious bug, not whenever they feel like it. And it doesn't even needs to be a fixed schedule, but there should at least be a minimum reasonable time between non-urgent releases. If they do have such a thing, it is too short.
And, unless those optimizations are actually affecting the driver code itself, in which case I would be inclined to call them bug fixes, not optimizations, there is no reason to package them as part of the driver and force people to update the full driver just for one or two games that they may not even own. If there is a configuration/profile specific to that game that could be provided separately with a less intrusive update mechanism, or it could be even included with the game itself. Same if it's some kind of binary file that is only needed by that game.
And yes, Microsoft also releases some updates as needed, for example the Windows Defender malware signature updates. Sometimes multiple times a day. But they do that in the background unobtrusively, without asking me each to read some release notes to see that if they apply to me and wasting my time.
At the moment I'm training an AI model, which will take about a week, and during that week I will be stuck with that notification that I "need" to update my driver, since there is no way to dismiss it after reading the release notes and seeing that it does not apply to me. Of course, I can close the NVIDIA taskbar icon, but that doesn't really solve anything. In fact it makes things worse, because now I won't be notified about the next updates that could be relevant to my system.
