A new Nvidia Game Ready driver is now out for download (version 391.01), and users of GeForce graphics cards get optimizations for the PC port of Final Fantasy XV, one of 2016’s biggest RPGs. In addition, Nvidia users should expect better performance for the incredibly popular battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The upcoming first-person action game Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and the multiplayer phenomenon World Of Tanks 1.0 both get support for better optimization.
Final Fantasy XV will be one of the best-looking PC games to date, when it launches on March 6, thanks to the slew of Nvidia GameWorks graphics technologies: Flow, HairWorks, ShadowWorks, Turf Effects, and Voxel-based Ambient Occlusion (VXAO). There is also native support for resolutions up to 8K as well as HDR10 for much better brightness and colors. The GeForce Experience application provides support for Ansel, which allows for customizable in-game screenshots. Ansel lets players change the camera angle on the fly, add image filters, and even capture 360-degree screenshots that can be viewed in VR. The ShadowPlay Highlights feature is also integrated, which can automatically record gameplay footage for specific circumstances in the game such as certain summons, special achievements, and defeating powerful enemies.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds continues to get optimizations; the new driver can give users of GTX 10-series cards up to a 7% boost in framerate. Nvidia conducted benchmarks with every card between the GTX 1050 and GTX 1080 Ti using a system equipped with an Intel Core i7-7820X CPU clocked at 3.6GHz and 32GB of DDR4 RAM at 2666MHz. The following chart outlines the performance improvements with driver 391.01 compared to the previous version:
| Video Card | 1920×1080 | 2560×1440 | 3840×2160 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GTX 1050 | 7% | – | – |
| GTX 1060 (3GB) | 5% | 6% | – |
| GTX 1060 (6GB) | 5% | 6% | – |
| GTX 1070 | 5% | 5% | 6% |
| GTX 1070 Ti | 4% | 5% | 6% |
| GTX 1080 | 3% | 7% | 7% |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 5% | 5% | 7% |
The new driver gets ahead of the March 8 release of Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible at launch. Wargaming’s long-standing game World Of Tanks also gets technical updates and optimizations on top of the upcoming 1.0 overhaul that’s currently in beta.
As with every driver update comes a handful of smaller fixes. Here are a few of the issues ironed out in version 391.01:
- BeamNG: Dynamic reflections flicker in the game.
- Call of Duty WWII: Flickering shadows occur in the game.
- NvfbcPluginWindow prevents Windows from shutting down.
- Booting from a cold boot results in black screen on a multi-monitor system.
- 3DVision: System shutdown time increases when Stereoscopic 3D is enabled.
- Nvidia Control Panel: The Display->Adjust desktop color settings->Content type setting is reset to “Auto-selected” after rebooting the system.
- GTX 980/1080 Ti: OpenGL program may crash when trying to map a buffer object.
- GTX 965M: Drop in GPU performance occurs.
There are some known issues still present, and Nvidia points out that the following problems still exist:
- Titan V: G-Sync displays may go blank when switching between different overclocked memory clocks multiple times.
- GTX 780 Ti in SLI: There is no display output when connecting the DisplayPort and two DVI monitors.
- GeForce Titan (Kepler-based): The OS fails after installing the graphics card on a Threadripper-enabled motherboard.
- Pascal GPUs and Gears of War 4: Blue-screen crash may occur while playing the game.
- GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and Doom: The game crashes due to the driver reverting to OpenGL 1.1 when HDR is enabled.
For more on Nvidia graphics cards, you can check out our GTX 1080 Ti review or GTX 1070 Ti review, two of the company’s latest cards. Now might be a bad time to buy a video card, however; read up on how cryptocurrency mining has affected video card prices. If you’re still on the fence about jumping into either of the games mentioned above, be sure to read our Final Fantasy XV review or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds review.