Jumping from 419.67, Nvidia today released the GeForce Game Ready WHQL 425.31 drivers, introducing support for DXR ray tracing for certain GTX cards, along with optimizations for Anno 1800, which is scheduled for a release next week.
Volta-, Turing-, and Pascal-based cards – though, not all of them – gain ray tracing support with this driver. Here’s a handy list:
- GTX 1060 6GB (Pascal)
- GTX 1070 (Pascal)
- GTX 1070 Ti (Pascal)
- GTX 1080 (Pascal)
- GTX 1080 Ti (Pascal)
- GTX 1660 (Turing non-RTX)
- GTX 1660 Ti (Turing non-RTX)
- Titan X (Turing non-RTX)
- Titan XP (Turing non-RTX)
- Titan V (Volta)
It must be noted, however, that this support doesn’t quite match what’s possible with an RTX card. There’s a certain performance hit to be expected; per Nvidia, Turing and Pascal cards may take two to three times longer to render one frame compared to Turing cards with RTX support. In other words, enabling ray tracing on these cards would be akin to just having a sip of what’s possible with ray tracing.
Those who wish to enable ray tracing on these non-RTX cards will still need to ensure that they are on Windows 10 version 1809 and are running their game with DirectX 12 enabled. Games that support ray tracing on RTX GPUs should automatically make available the option to enable these features without any game updates.
Along with this support, these drivers also come with a bunch of bug fixes:
- [SLI][Adobe]: With SLI enabled, artifacts may appear in Adobe applications. [2533911]
- [ARK Survival Evolved]: Fixed random crashes on GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs. [2453173]
- [Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands]: The game crashes when accessing the inventory menu. [2404783]
- [The Witcher 3]: Blue-screen crash occurs randomly with Bad Pool error during gameplay. [2449346]
- [The Evil Within 2]: Artifacts appear when Texture Filtering is set to High Quality in the NVIDIA Control Panel. [2526817]
- [Fabfilter plugins]: Applications crash when using the Fabfilter plugin. [2532725]
- [ASUS ROG Strix GL702VS notebooks]: Fixed corrupted graphics in games on ASUS ROG Strix GL702VS notebooks. [2535373]
- [Titan X][GTA V][Stereo]: With Stereo enabled, OUT of Memory message appears when launching the application. [200317778]
There are, also, a few known issues:
Windows 10 Issues
- [Surround][G-SYNC][Pascal GPU]: G-SYNC does not engage when using Surround resolution. [200505986]
- [NVIDIA Control Panel]: When the 3D Settings page->Vertical Sync setting is set to Adaptive Sync (half refresh rate), V-Sync works only at the native refresh rate after rebooting the system. [2543187]
- [Shadow of the Tomb Raider][Ansel]: Invoking Ansel in the game causes the game to slow down or crash. [2507125]
- The desktop on the primary monitor flickers when playing videos on the secondary monitor. [2552316]
Additonal Issues
- 2535506 - Flickering when Acer Predator XB271HU monitor is connected along with a second monitor and G-SYNC is enabled
- 2453059 - Flickering observed while GeForce Experience overlay is engaged + G-Sync set to fullscreen/windowed mode
There is a new or updated 3D Vision profile for Anno 1800 as well, with a rating of ‘Not Recommended’.
The 425.31 WHQL-certified Game Ready drivers can be downloaded via the GeForce Experience app on Windows or via the links down below. The complete release notes are available here.
Desktop GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Notebook GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 - Standard / DCH