There’s a whole lot of announcements being made at gamescom this week. It seems Nvidia has decided to celebrate gamescom by releasing its WHQL-certified 436.02 Game Ready drivers.
This update brings with it considerable performance improvements for several games, as well as the long-awaited 30-bit color support, support for three more G-Sync Compatible monitors, Game Ready status for Remnant: From the Ashes – which releases today –, and a few other surprises as well.
As per the claims made by Nvidia, the 436.02 driver bring with it up to 23% better performance for Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Strange Brigade, and World War Z, when compared with the 431.60 release from last month. You can read more about these improvements here or have a look at the charts below.
Nvidia is also introducing a new ultra-low-latency mode in beta with this driver enabling “’just-in-time’ frame scheduling, submitting frames to be rendered just before the GPU needs them,” reducing latency by up to 33%. If enabled, this feature would benefit games that are GPU bound with framerates hovering between 60 to 100, per Nvidia. It’s worth noting, however, that this mode can only be enabled for DX9 and DX11 titles as DX12 and Vulkan APIs give a game more control over the render queue.
GPU Integer Scaling, a feature that has been long-requested, is introduced with this release as well, but in beta and only for Turing-based GPUs. This feature benefits retro games as well as modern titles that use pixel art. Nvidia conveniently provides a comparison for FTL running at 4K, as seen below.
Nvidia Freestyle is also getting a new sharpening filter with this release with improved quality and performance over the existing “Detail” filter. AMD introduced something similar last month, as well. It’s possible to apply Freestyle filters in DX9, DX11, DX12, and Vulkan games; here’s what it looks like, enabled in Metro Exodus:
Studio drivers gained 30-bit color support last month with the 431.70 release. The 436.02 release brings that support to the Game Ready branch as well. It’s available across all product lines, including GeForce and TITAN cards.
It’s worth noting, though, that this also requires the display to support 30-bit color, as well as the game or software you may be using, and the content being presented. If all aligns just right, it would allow a pixel to represent over 1 billion shades of colors. Here’s the difference it makes:
As always, this release also brings with it a number of bug fixes:
- [SLI][Shadow of the Tomb Raider]: The game crashes with "DXGI DEVICE HUNG Error" while being launched [200541075]
- [AutoCAD 2017][Maya]: White screen or blue-screen crash may occur. [2511117]
- Mouse cursor may not render correctly after exiting a game. [2645203]
- [NVIDIA Control Panel - Russian]: There is a typographical error in the Manage 3D Settings->DSR settings text [2659281]
There are a few known issues as well:
Windows 10 Issues
- [Tom Clancy's The Division II]: The game may crash when played in DirectX 12 mode. [2587043/200406322]
- [Forza Motorsport 7]: There is corruption on the tracks in the game. [2682129]
- [Overwatch]: The games crashes with "Your rendering device has been lost" error. [2482278]
- [HDR][Integer Scaling]: Blue-screen crash or system hang may occur when changing the resolution while using integer scaling with HDR. [200542578/200542870]
- [Firefox][G-SYNC]: When G-SYNC is enabled, flickering occurs with YouTube full- screen video playback when hovering over the timeline. [200544130]
- System crash occurs while installing the drivers on a system with GPUs from mixed architectures; for example, Fermi and Pascal. [2676468]
Along with all of this, these drivers introduce the G-Sync Compatible tag to three more monitors:
- ASUS VG27A
- ACER CP3271
- ACER XB273K GP
There are also new or updated SLI profiles for these titles:
- BattleTech
- Dakar18
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Fe
- Fear the Night
- Heavy Rain
- Nelo
- Overkill's The Walking Dead
- PC Building Simulator
- Remnant: From the Ashes
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas
- Warhammer: Chaosbane
The 436.02 WHQL-certified Game Ready drivers can be downloaded as usual once they are available at 6am PT – in just about an hour. The complete release notes are available here.
UPDATE: Nvidia has published the drivers on time, available now to download via the GeForce Experience app on Windows or via the links down below.
Desktop GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Notebook GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 - Standard / DCH
UPDATE #2: A bug that resulted in the installation of GeForce Experience even if the user explicitly selects to not install it has caused Nvidia to pull this release. A fixed release will be published soon, per Nvidia.
UPDATE #3: The 436.02 Game Ready drivers with the GeForce Experience installation fix has now been published by Nvidia. The new download links are below:
Desktop GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 – Standard / DCH
Notebook GPUs:
Download: Windows 7, 8, 8.1 | Windows 10 - Standard / DCH
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