What's In Nvidia Driver 364.47? Vulkan API, Game Support And Bug Fixes

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By Michael Justin Allen Sexton
published

Nvidia released its Game Ready Driver 364.47 today, bringing with it a number of updates including support for new games and the Vulkan 3D API.

The new driver is optimized for running Tom Clancy’s The Division, Hitman, Need for Speed, Ashes of the Singularity, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Although this driver should positively affect your gaming experience with any of these titles, some games received more attention than others.

The driver update adds new SLI profiles for Hitman and another game called The Technomancer. A third game, Zui Zhong Bing Qi (Ultimate Weapon), also received an update to its SLI profile. Starting with this driver revision, Nvidia does not recommend running its 3D Vision technology on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Far Cry Primal, Just Cause 3, Need for Speed or Star Wars Battlefront (2015), but it added 3D Vision support for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

A major feature included in today’s driver release is the support for the Vulkan 3D API. This API is being designed by Khronos Group as a competitor to Apple’s Metal, AMD’s Mantle and Microsoft’s DirectX 12. As it is in many ways a successor to the OpenGL API, it has sparked considerable interest among game developers and gaming enthusiasts alike.

Although there aren’t many games that currently use Vulkan, it is important that Nvidia is adding support now, rather than later when games do appear on the market. This will help attract developers using Vulkan to use Nvidia GPUs while working on new games.

There were a number of bug fixes implemented in this driver, too. Most of the bugs were on Windows 10, which had issues such as discrete GPUs remaining active even when not in use, flickering in certain display configurations, and a handful of problems with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. There was also a bug fixed on all Windows OSes newer than Windows Vista that caused DirectX 9 games to stutter when using the driver override to force AA.

The driver is now available for download.

Update, 3/7/16, 12:15pm PT: We found user reports indicating that this driver is causing system instability and BSODs on Windows 10, but when we tested the driver ourselves, we didn't experience any instability issues.

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Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Michael Justin Allen Sexton is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware component news, specializing in CPUs and motherboards.
23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thor220
    The author of this article didn't do his research. Vulkan isn't a competitor to mantle because Vulkan's new features are all based off Mantle. It would be like saying Vulkan is a competitor to previous versions of OpenGL.

    What this does tell me is that Nvidia could have support Mantle at any time they wanted to but just didn't because that would mean giving in to AMD. Now that mantle has merged with Vulkan, Nvidia is more than happy to include it. I guess they don't really have a choice though seeing as they were already caught being behind on DX 12. I expect AMD to outperform Nvidia on Vulkan.
    Reply
  • MrMojoRisin
    "This API is being designed by Khronos Group as a competitor to Apple’s Metal, AMD’s Mantle and Microsoft’s DirectX 12."
    .
    It's competing with DirectX 12, yes, but AMD and Apple are both on the board of promoters of the Khronos group. AMD actually contributed Mantle to the Vulcan code base. So I wouldn't exactly call Vulcan a competitor to Mantle and Metal.
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    17619262 said:
    Awaiting tomorrow's patch for today's "game ready" drivers

    The driver is out now, you don't need to wait for tomorrow...

    17619299 said:
    The author of this article didn't do his research. Vulkan isn't a competitor to mantle because Vulkan's new features are all based off Mantle. It would be like saying Vulkan is a competitor to previous versions of OpenGL.

    What this does tell me is that Nvidia could have support Mantle at any time they wanted to but just didn't because that would mean giving in to AMD. Now that mantle has merged with Vulkan, Nvidia is more than happy to include it. I guess they don't really have a choice though seeing as they were already caught being behind on DX 12. I expect AMD to outperform Nvidia on Vulkan.

    Nvidia didn't have support for Mantle because it was proprietary to AMD GPUs. It was open in the sense that any game developer could use it, but not in the sense that Nvidia and Intel could implement support for it.

    And it is still accurate to say that Mantle and Vulkan are competitors. AMD has been quite clear that it wanted to help restart the development of gaming APIs, which had essentially stalled. AMD helped with the development of Vulkan, but that doesn't make Mantle and Vulkan the same. Vulkan isn't "Mantle 2.0". Games that were developed and supported Mantle don't all of a sudden have support for Vulkan. They are still clearly different and recognizable APIs that compete against each other.
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    I don't understand the 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' latest patch notes. Are they saying 3D Vision works for the Steam version, but not the Microsoft Store version or what?
    Reply
  • islane
    17619262 said:
    Awaiting tomorrow's patch for today's "game ready" drivers

    The driver is out now, you don't need to wait for tomorrow...

    I think a lot of people were problems with this new driver today. People on r/nvidia reporting BSODs, crashes, no video on reboot, etc... I would hold off on this one for a day or two.
    Reply
  • DeadlyDays
    technically Vulcan "competes" with OpenGL in that you can choose to use either, just like you can choose between opengl and directx. Vulcan is separate from OpenGL from how I understand it, but is toted as being for different use cases. Vulcan is just your Performance>all category vs traditional OpenGL compatibility>all(pretty huge simplification). You may be able to use them together in the same project but I haven't looked that deep into it yet.

    So the real situation is (Vulcan OR(?) OpenGL) XOR DirectX, and who cares about the other 3d api's (no one(important))
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    Maybe people will finally be able to get above 15fps in FC:Primal.
    Reply
  • Networkbob
    I just tried updating to to 364.47 through geforce experience. My PC blanked the screens and put a load of graphics corruption up in small boxes. These flashed a few times and then BSOD indicating an nvidia file had crashed, PC rebooted and once again same thing.. BSOD crash loop. I had luckily imaged the system drive yesterday so I was able to restore from that back to 362.00

    Card Zotac GTX980TI Amp Extreme
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    17619512 said:
    17619262 said:
    Awaiting tomorrow's patch for today's "game ready" drivers

    The driver is out now, you don't need to wait for tomorrow...

    I think a lot of people were problems with this new driver today. People on r/nvidia reporting BSODs, crashes, no video on reboot, etc... I would hold off on this one for a day or two.

    Yes we noticed quite a few users posting that they had problems, but we tested it out on a system and ran several games including Just Cause 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Assassins Creed Syndicate, but we didn't notice any stability issues. I posted an update in regards to this issue, but as we aren't able to replicate the issues there isn't much we can say about it.
    Reply
  • Moneyd623
    I had the same BSOD and reboot loop happen to me (GTX 980, i7-6700, Win 10, running 4k @ 60 FPS).

    Boot into safe mode, go into device manager and roll back the graphics driver. That's what fixed it for me.
    Reply