Nvidia released its brand new GeForce Game Ready 381.65 WHQL drivers. Although this driver release may not look like much more than an update for the new Quake Champions Beta and Ansel support for the adventure/survival game Kona and physics-based puzzle-platformer Snake Pass, there is actually a lot more going under the surface.
What's New
First of all, this Game Ready driver release offers what Nvidia calls "the optimal gaming experience" for the Quake Champions Closed Beta. We had hands on time with the game at PAX East earlier this year, and we can say from experience that there’s definitely a benefit from getting the highest framerate possible from your GPU while facing down your foes.
Ansel Support
Ansel support has also been added for Kona and Snake Pass. Ansel is Nvidia's custom in-game screenshot tool that allows you to take ultra-high resolution, 360-degree, stereoscopic 3D screenshots at any point in the game just by hitting Alt+F2 during gameplay. We were impressed after spending some quality time with Ansel late last year, but the high resolution screenshot tool is also a bit of a resource hog, as well.
New Features
In addition to offering support for the new Titan Xp, this driver release features support for the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update, DTS X and Dolby Atmos support for 5.1.2 speaker configuration, and Dolby Vision support for games. Changes have also been made to the Nvidia Control Panel. An option to override the Windows 10 desktop color settings control has been added to the Display page. Nvidia has also added an option to disable self-refresh power-saving features for G-Sync in the Manage 3D Settings page. This option applies to Pascal-based notebooks with G-Sync enabled.
Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 381.65
According to the release notes for GeForce Game Ready 381.65 WHQL drivers, this is a list the important changes and the most common issues resolved in this driver version:
[XSplit][DirectX 12 games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider]: Games experience poor performance.[GeForce GTX TITAN X][SLI][Battlefield 1- XP1 Update]: Shimmering occurs on grass and trees with SLI and in-game TAA enabled. [GeForce GTX 1070][Serious Sam HD]: Heavy flickering occurs in the game with Vsync enabled. [GeForce GTX 980 Ti]: The GPU occasionally gets stuck in a low power state after pressing Alt-Tab while playing a game.
The list of unresolved issues is rather lengthy and includes such problems as:
[GeForce Experience]: Driver installation may fail when attempting to perform a driver overinstall. To workaround, perform a clean installation.[SLI][GeForce GTX 1080][Battlefield 1 XP1]: With SLI enabled, corruption appears in the game when switching between full-screen and windowed mode.[GeForce GTX 1080 Ti][Mass Effect: Andromeda]: Random memory errors may occur when playing the game.Quantum Break window either remains blank or freezes in game scene in windowed mode.
For a complete list of unresolved issues, download the driver release notes here.
