It’s been just over a couple of weeks since Nvidia introduced its Ampere-based RTX 30 series GPUs to the world, with the RTX 3090 being the highest-end of them all.
RTX 3070 grabbed the headlines though, offering performance equivalent to an RTX 2080Ti for half the price. RTX 3080 also got some attention for offering double the performance of the RTX 2080 in workloads such as ray tracing, and for being the first to be available for purchase, on September 17, which is today.
As the RTX 3080 was made available for sale, Nvidia today also released its WHQL-certified 456.38 Game Ready drivers, bringing support for the new RTX 30 series cards, CUDA 11.1, and quite a lot of new features for its older generation cards as well.
Fortnite RTX, Reflex, Broadcast, and more
Fortnite is getting a new update adding raytraced shadows, reflections, illumination, and ambient occlusion, as well as support for Nvidia DLSS and a new map to showcase these new features, called Treasure Run, which is accessible through the creative mode. These features are available for all RTX GPUs, but it would be best to update to the latest drivers for an optimal experience, per Nvidia.
Along with its new GPUs, Nvidia also announced Reflex earlier this month, with the goal of significantly reducing latency between a click and the resulting photons emitting from the display. Reflex is available for GPUs dating all the way back to GTX 900 series. This driver release adds Nvidia Reflex support for Fortnite and Valorant. There is an extensive article about how Nvidia Reflex works over at Nvidia’s blog, as well.
Nvidia’s new Broadcast App was also announced earlier this month and is supported with this release, giving players the ability to use their GPUs for microphone noise removal, implement virtual backgrounds for their webcam feed in real-time, as well as auto-framing with head-tracking. It’s available for download separately over here, with a detailed blog post highlighting the features, along with an extensive setup guide.
GeForce Experience introduces some new features with this release as well, bringing an in-game performance and latency overlay and the ability to capture with ShadowPlay in HDR in 4K with a GTX 950 and above, and 8K on the RTX 3090. There’s also hardware-based decoding support for AV1 included with this release, for the RTX 30 series GPUs. You will need to get the codec from the Microsoft Store, however.
One-click Optimal Settings have been part of GeForce Experience for a while now, letting players set optimal graphics settings for games with a single click. It now supports 13 more titles, totaling to 909 supported titles:
- Among Us
- Crusader Kings III
- eFootball PES 2021
- Grounded
- Gunfire Reborn
- Iron Harvest
- Madden NFL 21
- Marvel"s Avengers
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Mortal Shell
- Skater XL
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
- Wasteland 3
This release also introduces One-click Performance Tuning, a new feature that monitors the GPU’s performance and automatically overclocks it, leading to improved performance in games. Nvidia does say, though, that overclocking your GPU may cause your PC to become unstable or show visual artifacts.
Game Ready, fixes, known issues, and more
Along with all of this, this release also bears Game Ready status for Mafia: Definitive Edition and Halo 3: ODST, which will be releasing on September 25 and 22, respectively.
As is usually the case, there"s an extensive list of issues that were fixed with this release:
- [Batman Arkham Knight]: Enabling Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling on PhysX games results in lower frame rate.[2988376]
- [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare]: The game may intermittently see a drop in frame rate when
- ray tracing is enabled. [3050468]
- [Detroit: Become Human]: The game may crash. [3037846]
- [Forza Horizon 4]: Stuttering occurs in the game after racing a few laps. [3101001]
- [Horizon Zero Dawn The Complete Edition]: Flickering and texture corruption occurs in game after setting Anisotropic Filtering to 16x from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200638389]
- [madVR][MPC-HC]: Various HDR issues occur when using the madVR renderer with MPC-HC. [3038381]
- [Minecraft Java Edition;]: The game may crash when launched with XSplit Broadcaster running in the background. [3052464]
- [World of Warcraft]: Objects randomly flicker. [3101638]
- Video playback on the secondary display lags/freezes while playing a game on the primary display if Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling is enabled [200586262]
- [Notebook]: Display is not detected when connected to Thunderbolt 3 port on HP Spectre x360-15t-df100 Notebook. [3087076]
- [Notebook][NVIDIA Control Panel]: With Clone mode set, only the Developer pages are visible in the NVIDIA Control Panel after hot-plugging a DisplayPort/HDMI Freesync display. [200637570]
- [Notebook]: When a game is played on the primary display and a YouTube video is played on the extended display, video playback is sluggish and stutters. [200586262]
- [Pascal GPU][Marvel"s Avengers]: The game may crash when switching windows [Alt+Tab] while the game is running. [3101682]
There are, however, quite a lot of known issues as well:
Windows 7 Issues
- [Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, display settings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]
Windows 10 Issues
- [SLI][G-SYNC][Red Dead Redemption 2 Vulkan]: With SLI + G-SYNC enabled, the games display corruption and a blank screen.[200645671]
- [World of Warcraft Shadowlands]: When run at frame rates greater than 60 FPS with high display settings, moving characters display minute twitching/stuttering. [200647563]
- [Sunset Overdrive]: The game may display random green corruption if Depth of Field is enabled from in-game settings. [2750770]
- [VR}: HDCP errors occur with Valve Index VR. [2967616]
- [Call of Duty - Warzone]: Freestyle does not work. (200593020)
- [Forza Motorsport 7]: The curb may display a black strip during a race on certain tracks. [2781776]
- [Fortnite]: Blue-screen crash occurs pointing to nvlddmkm.sys when playing the game at 4K resolution. [200645328]
- Workaround: Set the resolution to lower than 4K.
- [Zombie Army: Dead War 4][Ansel/Freestyle]: The Ansel & Freestyle tabs are unselectable. [2810884]
- [Omniverse 2020.2.4496]: Corruption occurs after switching from RTX Real-Time to RTX PathTraced renderer. [200649160]
- [Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, display settings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]
- [Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly drop to 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452]
- [Notebook]: Performance Power Mode cannot be set from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200657525]
Along with the issues stated above, players may encounter some issues caused by the interaction between in-game HDR settings and the Windows HDR settings. Nvidia has written up a helpful article with more details. Players with their newly purchased Ampere GPUs will also find Implicit SLI disabled, more information on that is available here. Some users may also encounter issues when trying to install the Nvidia Control Panel from the Microsoft Store, more information on that is here.
This release adds 5 more displays to the G-Sync Compatible displays list:
| Model | HDR | Size | LCD Type | Resolution | VRR Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acer XV253Q GW | Yes | 24.5 | IPS | 1920x1080 (FHD) | 50-240Hz |
| Asus VG27AQ1A | Yes | 27 | IPS | 2560x1440 (QHD) | 50-144Hz |
| LG 27GN800 | Yes | 27 | IPS | 2560x1440 (QHD) | 48-144Hz |
| LG 27GN600 | Yes | 27 | IPS | 1920x1080 (FHD) | 60-144Hz |
| ViewSonic XG270Q | Yes | 27 | IPS | 2560x1440 (QHD) | 50-165Hz |
There are new or updated SLI profiles for these titles as well:
- Baldur"s Gate 3
- Comanche (NVIDIA Turing GPUs and later)
- Crusader Kings III
- Disintegration (NVIDIA Turing GPUs and later)
- Population Zero
- RIDE 4 (NVIDIA Turing GPUs and later)
- Rocket Arena (NVIDIA Turing GPUs and later)
- The Blackout Club (NVIDIA Turing GPUs and later)
The 456.38 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, along with the blog post, and if you encounter any issues with this release you can report them here.
Desktop GPUs:
Game Ready: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Studio: Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Notebook GPUs:
Game Ready: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Studio: Windows 10 – Standard / DCH