SO what I see is that instead of gpu manufactures optimizing the software which their cards run on they just see HEY ADD SOME MORE MEMORY AND RAMP UP THAT CLOCK SPEED WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Which makes a ton of sense coming from a hardware manufacture, people constantly need to upgrade their cards to play games on what ever settings why write better drivers and what not to make older cards run a little better.
At some point they will need to do this when moore's law stops working and we can't really make things that much more powerful to keep moving forward they will need to improve drivers and optimize game engines to be less resource intensive to keep making innovative games with better textures and graphics with out the huge performance hit.
Shaders ROPs and TMUs will become the premium factor for GPU performance. We will come to a point where the GPU manufacturing process cannot get any smaller but we will need to increase the actual size of the GPU die to get enough Pixel Shaders, ROPs, and TMUs on the GPU to make a performance difference.
This is not to say that Drivers and software optimization is not going to happen. I just don't see them going away from trying to improve the actual hardware performance when gaming is inevitably going to have to take the step into 64-bit coding. If the developers want to get the highest level of performance out of the game engine to make their games absolutely phenomenal. The era of 32-bit gaming is on it's way out with the introduction of Star Citizen coming into the spotlight.