Nvidia is launching its RTX 4090 graphics card today, and its latest graphics driver is bringing support for the new hardware. The 516.94 WHQL Game Ready driver also carries support for several soon-releasing games, DLSS 3 support, alongside other optimizations and bug fixes.
Those picking up Nvidia"s latest, top-end graphics card, which starts at $1,599, will want to download this driver to gain official support and make sure the third-generation RTX hardware is running smoothly.
With Nvidia also introducing the AI-powered performance boosting technology DLSS 3 exclusively for RTX 4000 series, this driver is also important for playing games that support it. A Plague Tale: Requiem, Justice, Loopmancer, F1 22, Bright Memory: Infinite, SUPER PEOPLE, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Marvel"s Spider-Man Remastered will all receive updates to include DLSS 3 as an option.
As for previous generation RTX graphics card and laptop owners, the 522.25 driver also offers major DirectX 12 optimizations "which can dramatically improve performance." According to its own testing, Nvidia says the improvements can range from up to 5% (Far Cry 6) to 24% (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla) across a wide variety of games supporting DirectX 12.
Meanwhile, the upcoming games Gotham Knights, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, and Dakar Desert Rally have all received day-one support with this driver too.
Only three fixed issues are listed for this version:
- [Teardown] Resolves lower performance observed when MSI Afterburner overlay is used [3653400]
- Tiny Tina"s Wonderlands displays texture corruption after extended gameplay on NVIDIA GPUs [3777340]
- UE5.1 crashes when enabling path tracing on some drivers [3731151]
Known issues are these:
- Toggling HDR on and off in-game causes game stability issues when non-native resolution is used. [3624030]
- Videos played back in Microsoft Edge may appear green if NVIDIA Image Scaling is enabled upon resuming from hibernate or booting with fastboot. [3624218]
- [DirectX 12] Shadowplay recordings may appear over exposed when Use HDR is enabled from the Windows display settings. [200742937]
- Monitor may briefly flicker on waking from display sleep if DSR/DLDSR is enabled. [3592260]
- [RTX 30 series] Lower performance in Minecraft Java Edition. [3702953]
- [Forza Horizon 5] Rainbow like artifacts in game after driver update. [3685123]
- Dell XPS 9560 may crash and reboot when using desktop applications [3737715]
- Maxon - Cinema4D + Redshift3D vidmemory allocations cause TDR or Driver Crash [3659104] RedCine-X Pro potential crash while working with effects during video playback [3809401]
The Nvidia 522.25 WHQL Game Ready driver is now available for download through the GeForce Experience app, while standalone links can be found below. The release notes are here.
Desktop GPUs:
GeForce Game Ready Driver Download: Windows 11, 10 – DCH
Notebook GPUs:
GeForce Game Ready Driver Download: Windows 11, 10 – DCH
Don"t forget to check out our comparison between the RTX 4000, 3000, and 2000 series too!