Nvidia 556.12 WHQL driver is out with The First Descendant support and more

Nvidia has a new driver for those with gaming PCs powered by GeForce graphics cards. Version 556.12 WHQL is now available for download with the initial support and optimizations for The First Descendant and DLSS 3 support for the latest PAYDAY 3 update. If you want to get the best experience possible and ensure your GPU delivers the maximum of its capabilities, get to driver 556.12 now.

For those unfamiliar, The First Descendant is an upcoming third-person shooter based on Unreal Engine 5, where gamers fight against the invaders to protect the Ingris continent. You will get to fight various bosses and coop with up to 4 players during multiple missions. The First Descendant is coming to Steam on July 2, 2024, and it will also be available on Xbox and PlayStation.

Here is the official changelog for the Nvidia 556.12 WHQL Game Ready driver:

Game Ready for The First Descendant

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 3.5 technology including The First Descendant. Further support for new titles leveraging NVIDIA DLSS technology includes the latest update for PAYDAY 3 which supports DLSS 3.

Fixed issues in today's release include the following:

• [The Last of Us Part 1] Out of memory error with 555.xx drivers.
• [Halo Infinite] Crashing during initial loading screen with 555.99 driver.
• [Valorant] In-game statistics incorrectly shows high latency with 555.xx drivers.

Finally, here is the only known bug in driver 556.12:

• [NVENC] Quality and bitrate settings are ignored at 10-bit encoding

You can download Nvidia 556.12 WHQL on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11-based systems with the following graphic cards:

Full release notes for driver 556.12 WHQL are available here (PDF).