AMD and Nvidia give graphics drivers a performance tune up for Dirt 4

When it comes to racing, it's not just about the vehicle, but the driver as well. And in the case of virtual racing, it's the graphics driver that can make a difference. With that in mind, both AMD and Nvidia released new GPU drivers that are optimized for Dirt 4, the off-road racing game that released earlier this week (check out our full review).

Starting alphabetically with AMD, the company's new Crimson ReLive 17.6.1 driver release adds multi-GPU support for Dirt 4. It also boasts up to a 30 percent performance bump for Radeon RX 580 owners when using 8xMSAA, compared to the Crimson ReLive 17.5.2 release. Pretty impressive, if the performance claim holds true.

In addition to a better racing experience, AMD's latest GPU driver package adds a small gain to Prey—up to 4 percent better performance on Radeon RX 580 graphics cards.

Beyond those two games, AMD fixed a handful of issues. They include:

• Virtual Super Resolution may fail to enable on some Radeon RX 400 and Radeon RX 500 series graphics products.
• HDR may fail to enable on some displays for QHD or higher resolutions.
• Flickering may be observed on some Radeon RX 500 series products when using HDMI with QHD high refresh rate displays.
• AMD XConnect: systems with Modern Standby enabled may experience a system hang after resuming from hibernation.
• Fast mouse movement may cause an FPS drop or stutter in Prey when running in multi-GPU system configurations.
• Adjusting memory clocks in some third party overclocking applications may cause a hang on Radeon R9 390 Series products.
• Graphics memory clock may fluctuate causing inconsistent frame rates while gaming when using AMD FreeSync technology.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda may experience stutter or hitching in Multi GPU system configurations.
• The GPU Scaling feature in Radeon Settings may fail to enable for some applications.
• Error message "Radeon Additional Settings: Host application has stopped working" pop up will sometimes appear when hot plugging displays with Radeon Settings open.

You can download the latest Crimson ReLive drivers here.

Moving on to Nvidia, the GPU maker's GeForce 382.53 driver package is WHQL-certified and boasts "Game Ready" status for Dirt 4 and Nex Machine. For Dirt 4, Nvidia says a GeForce GTX 1060 is sufficient to push 60 frames per second at 1080p using the game's highest settings. For playing at 2560x1440, a GeForce GTX 1070 is recommended, and "only a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will suffice" for playing Dirt 4 in 4K. That is, unless you disable MSAA, then a non-Ti 1080 can push 60 fps at 4K.

Nvidia's latest driver introduces a few new SLI profiles for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, LIttle Nightmare, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Transformers Online. It also fixes a small collection of issues. They include:

• [DirectX 11 games]: On some titles, in-game V-Sync does not work if Fast Sync is selected from the NVIDIA Control Panel. Consequently, the game frame rate is not locked to the maximum refresh rate, resulting in possible tearing.
• [Aerofly RC 7]: Corruption occurs in the game when shadows are enabled.
• [OpenGL][Tombstone Enginer]: Driver update causes corruption in Tombstone engine games.
• [SLI][GeForce GTX]: The secondary display remains blank after switching from Clone or Extended mode to secondary-only display mode.

You can download the latest Nvidia GPU drivers here.