I was beginning to wonder when Nvidia would release an updated GPU driver, after having seen AMD dish out no less than three of them in the past month. Today I got my answer. Nvidia has started pushing out its 419.67 WHQL driver release for GeForce graphics card owners, and it has a little of bit of everything.
Let's start with the performance optimizations. The 419.67 driver update is optimized for the new battle royale mode in Battlefield 5 called Firestorm, which incidentally is now live.
It also brings "Game Ready" status to Anthem, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
"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," Nvidia explains.
Wondering why Shadow of the Tomb Raider is included in the list, since it's been out for several months now? It's because a recent patch added ray-traced shadows and DLSS to the game. Nvidia says its 419.67 driver update further optimizes performance and quality, based on those features.
In addition to all that, Nvidia's latest driver expands the list of officially certified G-Sync Compatible displays to include Asus's 25-inch VG258 and 27-inch VG278QR monitors.
"Under the G-Sync Compatible program, Nvidia works with monitor OEMs to validate the experience on monitors that support the AdaptiveSync protocol. Those that pass are designated as 'G-Sync Compatible'," Nvidia says.
The total number of G-Sync Compatible displays now sits at 17. That's a relatively number, especially considering that Nvidia claims to have tested over 400 monitors. However, you may have some luck enabling G-Sync on a non-certified FreeSync display, you just have to do so manually in the Nvidia Control Panel. If you'd rather not roll the dice, though, stick to our list of the best G-Sync Compatible FreeSync monitors.
Finally, Nvidia also used the time between its last and current driver release to fix a bunch of issues. They include:
- [DaVinci Resolve]: Performance drop occurs.
- [Ghost Recon: Wildlands][Ansel]: The game experiences low performance and stuttering and then crashes when using Ansel.
- [HDR][Far Cry:New Dawn DirectX 11]: Desktop brightness and color gets overexposed with ALT + TAB when Windows HDR is disabled and in-game HDR is enabled.
- [Total War: Warhammer 2]: Poor performance when using antialiasing.
- [Adobe]: Artifacts may appear in Adobe applications (fixed for single-GPU case).
- [Apex Legends]: Screen gets corrupted when switching from windowed mode to fullscreen mode when Windows HDR is enabled.
- [GeForce Experience]: Parts of the screen are cut off when recording video with Shadowplay.
- [Turing][Star Citizen]: The game flickers and then crashes to the desktop.
- [GeForce GTX 980]: NVAPI calls take a large amount of CPU time.
- [Titan RTX]: Graphics card rises about 20 degrees Celsius when running NVLINK command to enable TCC mode.
- [GeForce RTX 2080][Notebook][Resolume Arena 6]: The game exhibits slow performance.
- [GeForce RTX 2070] With two monitors connected and active, the second monitor flickers.
Nvidia's GeForce Experience should alert you to the new driver. Alternatively, you can follow this link to grab and install the driver update manually.
