As AMD struggles with AV1, Nvidia quickly fixes its NVENC driver issue via hotfix

A few days ago, AMD issued an update to its Windows driver version 24.2.1. The driver had a couple of good things in it as it was now WHQL signed plus it added support for a bunch of new Vulkan extensions.

Not everything was fine and dandy with the release though as AMD also updated its known issues section; in particular, our eyes were drawn to a bug that mentioned an AV1-related issue. We noticed that the company had pushed back the targeted fix timeline to Q3 of 2024 from Q2. The problem is related to AV1 video recording via its Adrenalin software "Record & Stream" tab, a feature previously under the Radeon Relive section.

Rival Nvidia though is just a lot quicker in this regard. The company has issued a new hotfix driver this week which fixes an NVENC codec issue. The bug would lead to corrupted video encoding on certain previous-generation GeForce GTX 16-series cards, namely the GTX 1630, the 1650, and 1650 Ti. The issue is likely to hit users when they try to record or stream videos using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) or Nvidia Share (formerly Shadowplay) feature.

While AMD has had the AV1 issue on hold for a while, Nvidia added this NVENC bug much more recently, and is indicative of Nvidia's efficiency in terms of dealing with these kinds of issues, at least in the case of codec-related problems.

For those who may not be aware, Nvidia's NVENC is the dedicated hardware encoder present on most Nvidia GeForce GPUs that helps encode videos, meant for game recording or streaming purposes.

The driver is built atop the previous driver, version 551.61. The company writes:

GeForce Hotfix display driver version 551.68 is based on our latest Game Ready Driver 551.61.

This hotfix addresses the following issue:

• Using NVENC to encode videos may result in corrupted videos or error message on GeForce GTX 1630/GeForce GTX 1650/GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPUs [4511046]

You can download the new Hotfix driver version 551.68 on this page on Nvidia's official website.

Although Nvidia does not explicitly state this, it seems the issue is only affecting TU117-based GPUs, as others like the GTX 1650 SUPER, 1660 or 1660 Ti or 1660 SUPER are unaffected. The latter are based on TU116, which is a slightly larger GPU die and both are built on Nvidia's Turing architecture.

This isn't the only hotfix driver Team Green has released recently. The company also released one earlier in the month in February which fixed multiple stuttering issues.