Control by Remedy Entertainment was released today and has already garnered plenty of positive reviews, but one of the more discussed aspects of the title prior to launch was the inclusion of NVIDIA RTX technology. Control utilises NVIDIA RTX ray-tracing in three different aspects of their game engine - Translucent Reflections, Indirect Diffuse Lighting and Contact Shadows - but that aside it still has some luscious graphical content. It's therefore great to see NVIDIA ready from day one with a brand new Game Ready driver.
The GeForce 436.15 Game Ready Driver is specifically optimised for Control with few changes signposted otherwise. NVIDIA do not give details of the performance impact of the changes in these drivers, leading one to assume that stability was the focus (particularly after last week's GeForce driver release that had a spotlight on general performance improvements). Still, NVIDIA do identify two core issues fixed in these drivers: track texture corruption in Forza Motorsport 7; and system crashes when two mixed-architecture GPUs are installed at the same time.
NVIDIA have also highlighted three issues due to be fixed in an upcoming update, and included a work-around for the Firefox/GSYNC interaction that caused Youtube videos to flicker:
[Firefox][G-SYNC]: When G-SYNC is enabled, flickering occurs with YouTube full-screen video playback on FireFox when hovering over the timeline. [200544130]
- To work around, either
Set the refresh rate to 60 or 120 Hz (or any refresh rate divisible by 60), or
If you want to play full-screen videos with Firefox on a G-SYNC monitor, create a profile and set it to VSync-On.
- To work around, either
Set the refresh rate to 60 or 120 Hz (or any refresh rate divisible by 60), or
If you want to play full-screen videos with Firefox on a G-SYNC monitor, create a profile and set it to VSync-On.
Updating to this driver is only necessary if you're suffering from the issues identified or are immediately indulging in Control. The drivers are supported in 64-bit versions of Windows 10 and 7 only, and support GPUs going as far back as the Kepler architectural generation (GTX 600-series). Download them directly, through GeForce Experience, or by selecting your GPU hardware and driver type via geforce.com/drivers.
Release Highlights
Whats New in Version 436.15 WHQL
Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases, including Virtual Reality games. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.
Game Ready
Provides increased performance and the optimal gaming experience for Control.
Software Module Versions
nView - 149.77
HD Audio Driver - 1.3.38.21
NVIDIA PhysX System Software - 9.19.0218
GeForce Experience - 3.19.0.107
CUDA - 10.1
Standard NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.940.0
DCH NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.955.0
New Features and Other Changes
Added driver support for Video Codec SDK 9.1
Added a new NVENCODE API to more detailed error reporting.
Added support for CUStream in NVENCODE API to facilitate parallel execution of pre-/post-processing of video on CUDA and encoder tasks.
Implemented bug-fixes and API enhancement to support H.264 MVC encoding. Please visit https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk for more information about the SDK.
Added driver support for Optical Flow SDK 1.1
Added new algorithms to improve the quality of flow vectors for SLOW preset, especially for flat regions.
Added a new API to retrieve the highest Optical Flow SDK version supported by the underlying driver. Please visit https://developer.nvidia.com/opticalflow-sdk for more information about the SDK.
Fixed Issues in this Release
[Forza Motorsport 7]: There is corruption on the tracks in the game. [2682129]
System crash occurs while installing the drivers on a system with GPUs from mixed architectures; for example, Fermi and Pascal. [2676468]
Open Windows 10 Issues
[Tom Clancy's The Division II]: The game may crash when played in DirectX 12 mode. [2587043/200406322]
[Overwatch]: The games crashes with "Your rendering device has been lost" error. [2482278]
[Firefox][G-SYNC]: When G-SYNC is enabled, flickering occurs with YouTube full-screen video playback on FireFox when hovering over the timeline. [200544130]
- To work around, either
Set the refresh rate to 60 or 120 Hz (or any refresh rate divisible by 60), or
If you want to play full-screen videos with Firefox on a G-SYNC monitor, create a profile and set it to VSync-On.
Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases, including Virtual Reality games. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.
Game Ready
Provides increased performance and the optimal gaming experience for Control.
Software Module Versions
nView - 149.77
HD Audio Driver - 1.3.38.21
NVIDIA PhysX System Software - 9.19.0218
GeForce Experience - 3.19.0.107
CUDA - 10.1
Standard NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.940.0
DCH NVIDIA Control Panel - 8.1.955.0
New Features and Other Changes
Added driver support for Video Codec SDK 9.1
Added a new NVENCODE API to more detailed error reporting.
Added support for CUStream in NVENCODE API to facilitate parallel execution of pre-/post-processing of video on CUDA and encoder tasks.
Implemented bug-fixes and API enhancement to support H.264 MVC encoding. Please visit https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk for more information about the SDK.
Added driver support for Optical Flow SDK 1.1
Added new algorithms to improve the quality of flow vectors for SLOW preset, especially for flat regions.
Added a new API to retrieve the highest Optical Flow SDK version supported by the underlying driver. Please visit https://developer.nvidia.com/opticalflow-sdk for more information about the SDK.
Fixed Issues in this Release
[Forza Motorsport 7]: There is corruption on the tracks in the game. [2682129]
System crash occurs while installing the drivers on a system with GPUs from mixed architectures; for example, Fermi and Pascal. [2676468]
Open Windows 10 Issues
[Tom Clancy's The Division II]: The game may crash when played in DirectX 12 mode. [2587043/200406322]
[Overwatch]: The games crashes with "Your rendering device has been lost" error. [2482278]
[Firefox][G-SYNC]: When G-SYNC is enabled, flickering occurs with YouTube full-screen video playback on FireFox when hovering over the timeline. [200544130]
- To work around, either
Set the refresh rate to 60 or 120 Hz (or any refresh rate divisible by 60), or
If you want to play full-screen videos with Firefox on a G-SYNC monitor, create a profile and set it to VSync-On.
