You might get a few extras frames in Doom Eternal if you're lucky.
(Image credit: Bethesda)Nvidia reckons it has figured out why Doom Eternal is annoyingly crashing on some PCs that are powered by GeForce hardware, and has a released a hotfix driver that is supposed to fix the issue. It also stomps out a few other bugs, just for good measure.
The crashing issue is the biggest one of the bunch. Earlier this week, Nvidia released a regular 'Game Ready' GPU driver update (version 471.11 WHQL) that added support for its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology and real-time ray tracing, which id Software recently added to the game.
"Over 70 RTX games have been released or updated with support for these and other Nvidia technologies, and today Doom Eternal gets its own RTX enhancements," Nvidia said when it dropped its 471.11 driver.
According to Nvidia, turning DLSS on in Doom Eternal can improve performance by up to 60% at 4K, and just as importantly, pushes most supported GPUs above the 60 fps threshold. We have not tested the claim, but have been pleased with DLSS in general.
It's all for naught, though, if the game is just going to crash to your desktop. That is where the 471.22 hotfix driver comes into play. It aims to fix a total of five issues that users might experience even with the latest Game Ready driver installed. They include:
- Doom Eternal may crash to desktop during gameplay
- League of Legends [Tencent] may fail to launch
- Mouse cursor color may shift when connected to certain DSC monitors in HDR mode
- [HDMI 2.1][8K] HDMI audio playback may become distorted after changing display modes
- Some displays screen resolution limited to 640x480 after driver update
The 640x480 issue can be especially irritating as well. It is not something we have run into ourselves, but apparently this is an odd bug that shows up every so often, based on some very old support threads that are out there.
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If you are not experiencing any of these specific bugs, there is no reason to apply the hotfix—it does not introduce any performance benefits or feature upgrades, so you're not missing out on anything. All of the fixes will be rolled into the next regular driver release as well.
Hotfixes are not dished out through Nvidia's GeForce Experience utility, and they don't show up when performing a normal driver search. If you need it, visit the 417.22 hotfix page to download and install the update.
What if Doom Eternal still crashes or unexpectedly stutters on capable hardware, though? Bethesda has a few other recommendations, such as disabling the Steam Overlay and/or unplugging any attached controllers before launching the game, to name just a couple possible remedies.
