Last month, AMD officially announced FSR 4.1 for older RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 hardware, with the RX 7000 series set to receive FSR 4.1 support in July. Well, Christmas has come early as FSR 4.1 is out now for RDNA 3 desktop GPUs, a few days before it was originally supposed to launch. It's available natively in over 300 games, and all you need to do is update your GPU drivers inside AMD Adrenaline software to unlock the latest upscaler.

• ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 9070 : was $639 now $599 at Newegg

FSR 4.1 for the RX 7000 series is based on INT8 code that differs from the FP8 instruction set that the RX 9000 series uses. Technically speaking, only RDNA 4 has the hardware required for FSR 4.1 to work optimally, while making it backwards compatible with previous generations requires a lot of tuning and falling back on older instructions that incur a slight performance loss in exchange for better visual quality.

AMD is confident that its in-house optimizations deliver better results than community efforts, as the video embedded above shows official FSR 4.1 achieving higher frame rates in Forza Horizon 6 and Crimson Desert versus FSR 4.0.2c. That version is built from leaked code that came out last year and has since served as the foundation of Optiscaler mods that force-inject FSR 4 by making the game think it's actually DLSS.

The biggest difference will still be seen against native rendering — playing Crimson Desert at 4K, an RX 7900 XTX only managed about 43 FPS on average, while FSR 4.1 bumped that up to 64 FPS. That's nearly a 50% improvement, while looking considerably better than FSR 3.1 and remarkably close to FSR 4.1 on the RX 9000 series. Sure, FSR 3.1 could probably net a few more FPS, but the image quality won't be as sharp.

AMD also confirmed it's working on "lightweight machine learning models" to bring FSR 4.1 to RDNA 3 APUs, which should extend support to a wide range of devices. For instance, the Z1 Extreme chip inside Valve's Steam Deck is based on RDNA 3 architecture. Phoenix Point and Hawk Point silicon, i.e., Ryzen 7040, Ryzen 8000(G), Ryzen 8040, and Ryzen 200 series, also rely on RDNA 3 graphics.

RDNA 3.5 is an extension of RDNA 3, and AMD pushed back against it, not receiving FSR 4.1 just this month. If we assume this announcement also counts RDNA 3.5, then expect FSR 4.1 to also come to Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen AI 400 series, along with Ryzen AI Max processors. AMD's current-gen Ryzen Z2 family for handhelds is also based on RDNA 3.5. For now, though, FSR 4.1 seems limited strictly to RDNA 3 desktop GPUs.

Support for older RDNA 2-based graphics cards is expected in early 2027, even though the community has interchangeably used INT8 mods for both the RX 6000 and RX 7000 series. Expect a bigger performance tradeoff on RDNA 2 compared to RDNA 3, which is what the company is likely trying to minimize in the months leading up to its launch. Nonetheless, it's exciting to see AMD at least try to catch up to Nvidia in terms of its upscaler support.

One last thing to note is that FSR 4.1.1 INT8 leaked earlier today through Proton Experimental. There was a DLL file signed by AMD, intended to work on RDNA 3.5 silicon — so basically the Steam Machine. A few people got hold of the file before it was removed and got it to work on even RDNA 2 GPUs via Optiscaler. Since the cat was out of the bag, perhaps that's why AMD decided to officially release FSR 4.1 for the RX 7000 series earlier than expected.

NVK, the community-built open-source Vulkan driver for Nvidia GPUs in Mesa, has gained experimental DLSS support, with the code landing in Mesa 26.2-devel, as reported by Phoronix. The driver doesn’t reimplement the upscaler but instead loads Nvidia's own pre-compiled CUDA binaries and runs them, a workaround that keeps the feature behind an experimental flag and ties it to whether compatible bytecode exists for a given card. Nvidia's proprietary Linux driver has of course handled DLSS for years, so the change closes one of the bigger gaps between the closed driver and its open-source counterpart, rather than bringing the technology to Linux for the first time.

DLSS runs on NVK through VK_NVX_binary_import, a Vulkan extension that lets an application load Nvidia CuBIN files, the pre-baked CUDA binaries Nvidia, and loads them on the GPU. Autumn Ashton opened the original pull request for the extension last year, and Thomas Andersen revived it roughly two months ago to clear merge conflicts and finish the work, with the path sitting behind the NVK_EXPERIMENTAL=dlss environment variable because known bugs remain.

The catch is the reliance on pre-compiled binaries; NVK can only run DLSS where compatible bytecode already exists for the GPU in use. The proprietary Nvidia driver avoids that limit with a route that compiles PTX, Nvidia's intermediate assembly, down to GPU bytecode at runtime. NVK has no equivalent, because it can’t translate Nvidia PTX into NIR, which is the intermediate representation Mesa drivers compile from.

Support for DLSS across the broader Linux graphics stack has been uneven, to say the least. As of late last year, Nvidia's DLSS 4 was still unsupported in Valve's VKD3D-Proton translation layer, which converts DirectX 12 calls to Vulkan for games running through Proton.

NVK began in 2022 as a from-scratch Vulkan driver led by Collabora's Faith Ekstrand alongside Karol Herbst and Dave Airlie at Red Hat, and it supports Turing (RTX 20-series and GTX 16-series) and newer architectures. In late 2024, it became the first open-source Vulkan driver for Nvidia hardware to pass Khronos conformance, reaching Vulkan 1.4 provisional spec. It runs on the Nouveau kernel driver and is separate from Nvidia's own open-source kernel modules, which the company ships with its proprietary user-space software stack.

At the XDC2025 conference in November, Ekstrand said NVK runs at around 50% of the official Nvidia driver's speed in many titles, that ray tracing is still in progress, and that the team is "barely keeping the lights on" with current developer resources, according to Phoronix.

Earlier this week, we reported on the Green Team officially retiring the creaky Nvidia Control Panel (NVCP), with all its major settings adjustments claimed to have been ported to the Nvidia App. Throughout its tenure, this long-in-the-tooth piece of graphics settings software stuck resolutely to the classic non-themed Win32 controls style, but we know there will be holdouts and those who miss it for one reason or another. Thankfully, Nvidia has left an NVCP installer in the Microsoft Store, for now. Let’s look closer at whether it is worth a separate download in mid-2026.

To be clear, you will still need to download a modern Nvidia graphics driver to use the separately available NVCP. The familiar control panel software that is now available via the Microsoft Store is simply a controls access UI - one that has now been relegated to a secondary, optional choice.

For existing Nvidia graphics card users, you probably won’t have to go out of your way to grab the old NVCP from the Microsoft Store. It should normally persist from previous driver installs and updates, unless you opt for a ‘clean install’ from now on.

Possibly the primary reason you will want to keep a copy of the NVCP handy is the updated Nvidia Apps’ missing “professional features.” From my nosing at the information available, RTX Pro / Quadro features - things like offering adjustments to Mosaic, Sync, stereo, and a few pro‑workflow toggles - are yet to be migrated. So, modern GeForce gamers shouldn’t worry about hanging onto NVCP for functionality.

Even if you don’t need the handful of missing features in new vs old, some folks will want to keep using the NVCP due to familiarity with Nvidia’s older lightweight settings software.

We’d also be tempted to download or keep a shortcut to the NVCP handy in case upcoming software from Nvidia messes up the controls accessible in the Nvidia App. The Green Team’s software has come under fire for a string of buggy releases lately. In the likely scenario that Nvidia will ship an upcoming version of its Windows drivers with some feature-breaking wrinkles or crashing issues, the NVCP might be handy for fallback or troubleshooting.

Microsoft announced Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) for Xbox ROG Ally devices last year, bringing precompiled shaders to the handheld to improve load times. Since then, ASD has been included in the DirectX SDK, with both Intel and Nvidia already releasing their own versions of the tech. Today, AMD joins them as Microsoft expands ASD beyond handhelds to RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA 4 GPUs.

Forza Horizon 6 is the latest game to feature ASD on Windows 11 PCs, but you need the Microsoft Store/Xbox PC app version to take advantage of it. Using an RX 7600 GPU and a Ryzen 7 5800 CPU, Advanced Shader Delivery helped the game boot up 95% faster, taking only four seconds to load on first launch. Without ASD enabled, Forza Horizon 6 took nearly a minute and a half to load otherwise.

This is because every time you install a new game or go through an update, the game needs a fresh shader cache, which can take a few minutes to rebuild. Even if you don't touch the game, but your GPU drivers are updated, you need to recompile shaders for all of your games when you open them for the first time. This process is necessary because shader compilation is performed on-device and must account for hardware variability.

Microsoft's solution is to decouple shaders from drivers entirely and place them in a Precompiled Shader Database (PSDB) that lives in the cloud. Every time you download a game from the Microsoft Store or the Xbox PC app, ASD detects your specific configuration (game, GPU, driver) and downloads the precompiled shaders in advance. So, when you open the game, the shaders are already compiled, and you don't have to wait.

Consoles have done this forever, which makes sense considering they don't have to worry about different hardware configs. Even Valve has a version of precompiled shaders for Linux that it developed for the Steam Deck, but never ported to Windows. Since SSDs have made long load times a thing of the past, this has been one of the last remaining hurdles to instantaneous game launches.

Advanced Shader Delivery is available only on RDNA 3 and later GPUs and only on games downloaded via the Xbox PC app or the Microsoft Store. We don't know when other Windows marketplaces will adopt it, but at least 34 other games should support ASD right away, since they were part of the original announcement for the Xbox ROG Ally handhelds.

Moreover, you need to be enrolled in the Xbox Insiders program to get the Xbox Insiders Hub app, which is required to enable Advanced Shader Delivery, since Microsoft is classifying this as a preview. The company worked closely with AMD to develop it, which is why it's limited to RDNA 3+ hardware for now, because otherwise, it's supposed to be a universal solution for all GPUs on Windows 11 going forward.

Regardless, if you have an Nvidia GPU, the Nvidia app should have a feature called "Auto Shader Compilation" that does the same thing. It gives you more granular control over the size of the shader cache, too. If you're rocking an Intel GPU, then check out "Precompiled Shader Distribution" in the Intel Graphics app instead. Intel has implied that it's using its own cloud database for now, with the ASD standard being adopted later this year.

AMD’s Adrenalin 26.5.1 graphics driver, released on May 6, has raised concerns among AMD graphics card owners because it appears to break the Zero RPM function on some of its best graphics cards. The function seems to stop working after a monitor resumes from sleep or when turned on again, causing the graphics card's temperatures to rise silently.

For those unfamiliar with Zero RPM, it is a function that automatically turns off the cooling fans when the graphics card is idle or under a light workload, such as tasks like web browsing or watching videos. The primary benefits of the Zero RPM feature include reducing system noise and dust accumulation inside the graphics card over time, while also prolonging the lifespan of the cooling fans by minimizing unnecessary use.

With Zero RPM enabled, the graphics card relies solely on its heatsink for passive cooling, provided temperatures remain within a safe range. Once temperatures exceed a certain threshold, for example, during gaming or intensive graphical workloads, the fans automatically ramp up to keep temperatures in check. Apparently, there's a malfunction with the Zero RPM feature in the Adrenalin 26.5.1 graphics driver in a very specific yet common scenario.

Redditor Evelyne-Tourneciel observed that Zero RPM activates as usual when the monitor goes to sleep or when is turned off. However, upon resuming from sleep or after powering the monitor back on, Zero RPM remains activated, so the graphics card's cooling fans stay off. The issue poses a significant risk, as you may unknowingly begin gaming or other demanding tasks while the cooling fans remain idle, preventing proper heat dissipation.

Since the fans fail to spin, the graphics card's temperatures will rise quickly, potentially leading to thermal throttling, reduced performance, or even hardware damage. It's especially concerning for AMD graphics card owners in regions with harsh climates, since the risk of overheating is higher.

Zero RPM Mode bug 26.5.1 from r/radeon

In addition to Evelyne-Tourneciel, at least four other AMD graphics card owners have reported experiencing the same Zero RPM malfunction with the Adrenalin 26.5.1 graphics driver.

The first and most straightforward stopgap workaround is to restart your system. It is far from ideal, though, as it requires you to reboot your computer every time the monitor resumes from sleep or is powered back on. The process can quickly become tedious and annoying if you frequently step away from your computer. You could disable Zero RPM altogether, but that means missing out on its benefits.

A more technical fix that has proven effective for some users is to perform a clean offline installation of the AMD graphics drivers using a third-party utility like Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). DDU can help completely remove all traces of the current and previous Adrenaline drivers before reinstalling a fresh copy of the driver that you want.

For a more hassle-free solution, you can roll back the Adrenalin driver to an earlier version, such as Adrenalin 26.3.1, with DDU, since that version does not appear to have the Zero RPM bug. That means missing out on new features, optimizations, or security updates introduced in the latest releases, though.

Evelyne-Tourneciel has seemingly reported the issue to AMD. However, it seems that AMD hasn't acknowledged the bug or provided a solution. The latest Adrenalin 26.5.2 graphics driver, which just came out of the oven today, has no mentions of the Zero RPM bug. If you're experiencing the same issue, we recommend submitting a bug report to AMD so the chipmaker can get to the bottom of it.

Owners of Radeon RX 9000-series cards have been enjoying the benefits of the company's FSR 4 upscaling tech for some time now, and that feature has officially been exclusive to those products since launch. Gamers with older Radeons were left out in the cold, sparking community outrage—until today. AMD VP Jack Huynh has revealed that FSR 4.1 upscaling will be made available for RDNA 3 cards (RX 7000-series products) in July, and for RDNA 2 cards (RX 6000-series products) in "early 2027."

Community testing of AMD's INT8 FSR 4 code puts the penalty at around 10-20% versus FSR 3 on 6000-series cards, and a lower cost on 7000-series Radeons, but only testing with the full official version will tell the full story. Having said that, even with lower performance scaling, the quality-to-speed ratio of FSR 4.1 is almost certainly worth it.

The company has hinted at open-sourcing FSR4 in the wake of the aforementioned leak, a move that would probably be a good idea for the future of the technology, given how AMD's GPU division seems focused on catching up to Nvidia in the far more lucrative market AI accelerators. A more recent SDK update also suggested that FSR frame generation might get 4-6x multipliers, too, which would give it feature parity with Nvidia's MFG. In any event, making FSR 4 available to owners of older Radeons is a welcome step that will extend the useful life of those products for some time.

The news is certainly welcome for gamers with older Radeons, though technically minded folks already had access to FSR 4's improvements by way of community tools like Optiscaler. AMD initially restricted FSR 4 to RDNA 4's accelerated FP8 hardware, but an FSR 4 source code leak in August 2025 revealed that the company had also created an INT8 version of the AI upscaling model that was compatible with older cards. The community used that source code to enable support for FSR 4 on older Radeons through unofficial tools, creating an ongoing outcry for official support that's now been answered.

It's notable that the upcoming official release will incorporate the latest FSR 4.1 release. That upscaler improves on the original FSR 4.0 on most every front, with less blurring and smearing, better detail retention on thin lines and distant retention, and finer particle effects. There's also significantly less shimmer on object edges (aka improved temporal stability).

Apple has just reportedly signed drivers for Nvidia eGPUs, allowing them to finally work on Apple silicon devices. Tiny Corp said in its X post that the company has finally approved the software, letting users pair the GPUs with Macs for AI LLM processing. In fact, the company claims that installing the drivers is now so easy that “a Qwen could do it.” The company first tested an eGPU on Apple Silicon in May 2025, but now that it’s supported by Apple, it means that users no longer have to use workarounds for supported hardware, like disabling System Integrity Protection, to get the system working.

Tiny Corp is the company behind the tinybox, an AI accelerator built around four high-end GPUs. It was famously known for butting heads with AMD due to driver issues, with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su stepping in just to get things right. At the moment, the company is selling the red v2, which is powered by four AMD 9070XTs and costs $12,000, and the green v2 Blackwell, which costs $65,000 and has four RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs. It’s also planning to launch the exabox in 2027, which will come with 720 RDNA5 AT0 XL GPUs to deliver around 1 exaflop of computing power for around $10 million.

High-end Apple computers recently became popular with the rise of AI agents like OpenClaw. In fact, this frenzy has driven a shortage of Macs that came with massive amounts of Unified Memory, with the delivery window pushed from six days to six weeks. It has even gotten to the point that Cupertino no longer offers the 512GB Unified Memory option for the Mac Studio, while the 256GB model received a $400 price bump.

This custom driver seemingly did not come from the GPU maker, though, with Tiny Corp seemingly working on it on its own. Subsequently, this means that the driver is designed for running AI LLMs and not for gaming, surely disappointing people who don’t want to own two different PCs for work and entertainment. Nevertheless, this is still a game-changer for people working with artificial intelligence, as they could now potentially do training or inference (with some limitations) without needing a dedicated AI supercomputer like Tiny Box.

The latest version of the Nvidia App has brought a lot of new improvements, with the highlight being the new DLSS 4.5 dynamic multi-frame gen. We've already gone hands-on with dynamic MFG, but the update also introduces another interesting feature called "Auto Shader Compilation." ASC aims to make your games load faster following a GPU driver update by saving you from runtime shader compilation.

Every time a new graphics driver comes out, your GPU needs to recompile shaders for games you've already installed. This process happens when you open the game and can take up to a few minutes, depending on your hardware, which is precious time wasted in this economy. Auto Shader Compilation, as the name suggests, will automatically compile these shaders for you in the background.

The next time you sit down and launch a game, you won't have to wait for the shaders to recompile in front of you. Keep in mind that this feature only works for titles that have already had their initial shader compilation done, so any new game you install will still need to go through the manual shader compilation process for the first time. Every subsequent GPU driver update, though, the Nvidia App will handle things for you.

The feature is currently in beta, so it's disabled by default, but you can go into the Global Settings and activate it under "Shader Cache," where you can also set the storage and resource limits for it. For instance, a 100 GB cache size can store shaders for around 20 modern AAA titles, but usually it's much smaller than that. You can allow either low, medium, or up to a high degree of system utilization for this process as well.

Nvidia says "this beta is the first step into optimizing shader compilation for GeForce gamers," likely hinting at Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD). Microsoft introduced ASD last year on the ROG Xbox Ally and recently made it a part of the DirectX SDK, with all major industry players set to adopt it. Intel has already launched "Precompiled Shader Distribution", but that isn't built on top of Microsoft's framework just yet.

ASD paves the way to a future where the need for local shader compilation is drastically reduced. Soon, by leveraging precompiled shaders stored in the cloud, GPU manufacturers will be able to prepare a game ahead of time for users without any manual intervention. You won't even need to wait for shaders to compile for the first time; the idea is that they're already compiled in the background according to your specific hardware config and distributed over the network when needed.

Nvidia's Auto Shader Compilation doesn't completely eliminate wait times, but it should help users make the most of their limited gaming time by doing shader compilation work ahead of time (at least after the initial compile).

AMD has just released a new graphics driver that enables the latest edition of its upscaling tech for RDNA 4 GPUs: FSR 4.1. This is an iterative update, but it does bring official support for Crimson Desert (and Death Stranding 2), adding Ray Regeneration 1.1 to the game, along with improving the base upscaler for "ML-powered" FSR games. The Ultra Performance Mode is now faster, too, delivering higher FPS than before.

Most notably, FSR 4.1 improves the quality of AMD's AI-enhanced upscaling. Games that could previously be upgraded to FSR 4 via driver override will now use the upgraded 4.1 model for this purpose. The new model appears to offer more detail in objects in motion, especially foliage. AMD showed an example where grass looked significantly sharper and less blocked-up like with FSR 4.0. Finer details like these usually become subject to artifacting or just look blurry with less advanced upscaling approaches, but FSR 4.1 seems to be handling them well, and better than the first FSR 4 model.

The latest driver also upgrades FSR Ray Regeneration to version 1.1. Ray Regeneration is AMD’s way of denoising a limited number of ray-traced samples and rebuilding them into a higher-quality final image, similar to Nvidia's DLSS Ray Reconstruction. AMD showed Ray Regeneration 1.1 producing better contrast in scenes, with much more realistic shadows, alongside the potential benefits of RT for global illumination and enhanced reflections.

Lastly, AMD also talked up Ultra Performance Mode, where the game is rendered at a low internal resolution to maintain high FPS. Apparently, it's also getting a performance boost, squeezing out even more frames without sacrificing image quality (at least compared to the limitations for IQ already present in Ultra Performance mode). AMD didn't offer specific performance claims for this improvement, though.

All of these features were demoed using Crimson Desert, and AMD says at least FSR 4.1 upscaling is available on all "ML-powered" games. That likely means titles that already supported FSR Redstone, but gamers have been able to manually override FSR versions in AMD's Radeon Software since FSR 4 first arrived, so it's likely that replacement will now use FSR 4.1 with the latest driver.

As an interesting note, FSR 4.1 uses the same underlying AI model as PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) 2. The second iteration of that tech has just come out for the PS5 Pro, and PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny confirmed on X that the two technologies share a common underpinning. PSSR 2 is based on FSR 4.1 and is part of Project Amethyst, Sony and AMD's joint effort to advance AI tech in gaming.

For all its improvements, FSR 4.1 remains limited to RX 9000-series GPUs only. In contrast, Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 upscaler works on much older GeForce GPUs. Unofficial community support for FSR 4 on older Radeons thanks to leaked source code appears not to have moved AMD's official position on the availability of FSR 4 yet, so owners of those older cards will continue to miss out.

Microsoft launched Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) last year as part of the DirectX SDK, but it was limited to only the ROG Xbox Ally devices at the time. The feature was always intended to eventually go mainstream — and Intel has just released a new graphics driver that brings a version of it to Arc GPUs. The company is calling it "Precompiled Shader Distribution" and it's available on select mobile and desktop chips.

Precompiled Shader Distribution downloads the shaders for a game ahead of time, so you don't have to wait for the shader cache to build up when you first open it. The process happens automatically in the background once the Intel Graphics app detects you have the game installed. Depending on your exact hardware config, it starts downloading shaders from Intel's cloud and loads them into a dedicated folder.

Intel told TechPowerUp it is "also working with Microsoft on launching Advanced Shader Delivery later this year," meaning that this is Intel's own implementation for now — it will only get better from here (hopefully). The feature is launching with 13 Steam games: They're all heavy-hitters and will offer some level of faster loading, while reducing shader stuttering mid-gameplay.

• Black Myth: Wukong
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• Cyberpunk 2077
• God of War Ragnarök
• Gotham Knights
• Hogwarts Legacy
• NBA 2K26
• Starfield
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• The Outer Worlds 2

The company is claiming this will make your games load 2x faster on Arc B-series discrete GPUs and on the Core Ultra 200 series' integrated graphics, on average. The latest Panther Lake lineup with Xe3 graphics will benefit even more and will receive an average 3x improvement in game loading times. There's no support for Arc Alchemist yet — and it may not be coming soon, since Intel lists the latest Arc GPUs as a hardware requirement.

In the benchmarks shared, God of War: Ragnarok was the most impressive by far, loading an insane 37 times faster with Precompiled Shader Distribution on an Arc B390 iGPU. The Oblivion Remaster only saw a 1.3x improvement across both the Arc B580 graphics card and the Arc 140V iGPU on a Core Ultra 9 288V. Of course, not every game will take full advantage of this feature — especially not right away.

But as Advanced Shader Delivery becomes commonplace and other chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD started introducing it on the driver level, shader caching issues should slowly become a thing of the past. PC will be able to achieve parity with console in yet another field, since its plus point — the variety of hardware configs — has actually held back precompiled shaders from being a possibility on the platform for a long time.

Precompiled Shader Delivery will also update cache for all the shaders alongside new drivers, so your game is always running smoothly. Within the driver release, Intel actually calls this feature "Graphics Shader Distribution Service" — but it refers to the same thing. If you want to enable it on your own Arc GPU, open the Intel Graphics Software, go to Graphics, then 3D Rendering, and you'll see the toggle right there.

Intel has just published the SDK for XeSS 3.0 — the latest iteration of the company's in-house AI upscaler. XeSS 3's highlight feature is support for 3x and 4x multi-frame gen (XeMFG), similar to Nvidia's DLSS MFG available on RTX 50-series GPUs. But community developers hoping to use Intel's upscaling innovations in downstream projects will continue to be disappointed. The SDK is now available as Windows binaries on GitHub despite Intel's promise to make XeSS open-source four years ago.

Any game that already supported XeSS 2.0 will benefit from a simple upgrade process. According to Intel, devs just need to swap the old .dll files for the new ones. The in-game settings UI also needs to be updated to reflect 3x and 4x MFG options instead of just an on/off toggle like before.

Intel has continued to keep its upscaling suite closed source with version 3.0, providing no source code for streamlined injection. To be fair, this practice extends across cutting-edge upscaling tech from all vendors. While AMD has generally made FSR versions prior to 4.x available as open-source, the company has held FSR 4 much closer to the chest, including holding back an official INT8 fallback for older hardware that only exists due to inadvertently leaked source code.

Often, developers don't follow through with even a drop-in upgrade, in which case, access to the source code might make the community's modding efforts easier. Still, you can manually override a game's built-in XeSS framegen to support 3x and 4x modes from Intel's driver suite on Arc GPUs. But frame generation, specifically, only works in DirectX titles on Windows, not on Linux or in games using the Vulkan API.

The base upscaler — XeSS-SR (super resolution) — hasn't been majorly overhauled in XeSS 3.0, since Intel's focus with this release is multi-frame gen. Because of XeMFG being limited to only DirectX 12 Windows titles, gamers on other platforms or APIs will not benefit from XeSS 3.0 nearly as much.

Regardless of its limitations, XeSS 3.0 is a major update for Intel and brings an impressive performance bump when implemented correctly. Given the challenges that Intel has faced in driving adoption of the most recent XeSS versions with game devs, the release of this SDK is an important one for devs that might be persuaded to consider including upscaling and frame-gen tech for GPUs of all vendors.

While Intel's desktop gaming ambitions have been quiet since the launch of Battlemage products in late 2024, the latest Panther Lake mobile platform and its Arc B390 high-end iGPU are likely to reach a large number of gamers in time. Those users will rightfully expect feature support for their GPUs given the prevalence of Intel's iGPUs in laptops. We can only hope that the XeSS 3.0 SDK release spurs greater adoption of Intel's performance-boosting tech going forward.

AMD's Linux graphics stack had an unusual moment this past week. Anush Elangovan, a corporate VP at AMD, published a small experimental Radeon compute driver written entirely in Python, as reported by Phoronix. Beyond that, the code was produced entirely using Anthropic's Claude Code, according to Elangovan. Naturally, the headline was irresistible: a senior AMD engineer using AI to produce a new GPU driver? Shocking! But the reality is more technical and less radical; what he built is not a replacement for the company's real drivers. Instead, it's essentially a lightweight driver test harness designed to poke directly at AMD's Linux GPU interfaces.

Modern Radeon GPUs on Linux normally run through a fairly deep software stack built around ROCm. Applications talk to ROCm libraries, which in turn talk to user-space runtimes, and eventually commands flow into the kernel's AMDGPU driver. Elangovan's project cuts through a large chunk of that stack. The Python code communicates directly with the kernel driver via device nodes such as/dev/kfd and /dev/dri/render*. From there, it can allocate GPU memory, create compute queues, submit command packets, and synchronize CPU and GPU work. In other words, it reaches down to the lowest public layer of AMD's compute interface.

That sounds more dramatic than it is; the kernel driver (which is not replaced or affected here) still does almost all the heavy lifting. The Python layer simply constructs the command packets and sends them through the existing kernel APIs. As an analogy, it's kind of like using a laptop to temporarily replace the engine controller in your project car. It's not something you'd use long-term, but it's a very helpful diagnostic tool. The point is to interact with the hardware in a very controlled way without the rest of the ROCm software stack in the middle.

Obviously, that makes the project useful for debugging and experimentation. Engineers can isolate bugs in ROCm or test specific GPU features without compiling huge C++ projects. The prototype already handles a few real-world tasks, including command-queue creation, memory allocation, compute-dispatch packets, and GPU synchronization primitives. Because it's written in Python, the code is small and easy to modify, making it ideal for testing scenarios where the goal is to quickly reproduce hardware behavior.

Another clue about the project's purpose appears in the code itself. The prototype mentions a "pluggable architecture for future bare-metal PCI (AM) backend." That phrase sounds exotic, but it points in the same direction as the rest of the design. A bare-metal backend would bypass even the kernel driver and talk to the GPU directly over PCI. That kind of setup is usually used for hardware bring-up, diagnostics, or extremely low-level testing environments, rather than consumer software; bypassing the kernel driver would break everything that relies on the features provided by that driver, such as multitasking, virtual GPU memory, and DRM.

For anyone hoping this turns into a Python-powered Radeon driver for everyday Linux systems, I'm sorry to say that is very unlikely. Production GPU drivers are massive projects with shader compilers, memory managers, power management, security layers, and support for complex APIs like Vulkan and OpenGL. None of that exists in this experiment. What Elangovan demonstrated instead is that AMD's Linux kernel interface is open and modular enough that someone can script against it from a high-level language. And, I guess, that he really likes Claude Code.

It's been a few days since Nvidia recalled its last GeForce GPU driver, and a new one has already been released to replace it. The new GeForce 595.71 driver fixes the potentially catastrophic errors with its 595.59 version that reportedly caused issues on RTX 30-series and newer cards.

The issue, as we reported on at the time, was spotted by users who spotted an issue with how the driver handled fan usage on their cards. In some instances, the fans on Nvidia GPUs weren't being detected properly, with reports in several forums, including the official Nvidia forum, about the issue. A more catastrophic bug, however, was the driver causing one or more GPU fans to stop spinning entirely.

Given how important cooling is for your GPU, this could have, in some instances, caused it to fail quite dramatically under load. It was unclear at the time if third-party apps like MSI Afterburner were causing further problems, too, although ComputerBase collated complaints spread across a spectrum of RTX 30, 40, and 50-series owners at a range of different sources online.

As a result, Nvidia recalled the driver, advising gamers to instead revert to its earlier 591.86 driver. Luckily, Nvidia has released its new 595.71 driver, which, as with the previous release, introduces game-release optimizations for Resident Evil Requiem, which we've already put through its paces to test CPU performance, with reasonable success.

It also includes several game-facing bug fixes, as well as introduced 'game ready' support for Marathon, including support for DLSS Super Resolution and Nvidia Reflex. This driver is available for the latest Nvidia graphics cards immediately and can be downloaded from the Nvidia website.

This isn't the first time that Nvidia has encountered an issue with its driver. As recently as last year, the company was forced to issue an emergency bug fix after a Windows 11 update caused serious gaming performance issues. We also saw issues back in March 2025 when, following the release of its new RTX 50-series GPUs, drivers for older RTX 30 and 40-series cards were affected by BSODs and instability issues, forcing developers to recommend gamers roll back their drivers.

While Nvidia has been quick to recall and resolve the issues with this update, gamers will no doubt be hoping it's a bump in the road that won't happen again.

Nvidia just released the GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.59, which was supposed to optimize its GPUs for Resident Evil Requiem. However, ComputerBase [machine translated] reports that this has been causing issues on RTX 3000-series and newer cards, with users saying that the driver only reads a single fan on the GPUs.

While some thought third-party apps like MSI Afterburner may have been causing interference, another user reported the same problem even without Afterburner installed.

It seems that Nvidia has taken down the driver update, as it’s no longer available on the company website. However, if you’ve already upgraded to the latest driver version and are experiencing issues, you must roll back to the previous driver version. You can do this in the Nvidia App by clicking the three dots in the Drivers tab.

If you don’t have Nvidia's software installed, you can go to the Windows Device Manager app, unfurl Display adapters, and double-click on your GPU. In the properties window, click on the Driver tab and then choose Roll Back Driver. If the button is unavailable, Nvidia says that you should uninstall the GPU driver and then download and reinstall the latest available driver, which should fix the issue, as it has already removed the problematic driver from circulation.

This isn’t the first time that the company has had to deal with driver issues affecting many users. Nvidia last released an emergency fix in November 2025 after Microsoft’s KB5066835 update borked gaming performance on several titles on Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 PCs (although this was arguably a Microsoft problem that Nvidia had to fix in a rush). RTX 30- and 40-series GPUs also ran into BSODs, system instability, and game-breaking bugs in March 2025 when the company dropped new drivers that were seemingly built for the new RTX 50-series GPUs.

AMD and Nvidia generally release drivers whenever a new major game drops to ensure that the new title will play well with their GPUs. However, this is easier said than done, especially given the nearly infinite number of hardware configurations that manufacturers need to deal with. Hopefully, the team behind Nvidia’s drivers could find the issue and have an updated release before the latest addition to the Resident Evil franchise becomes publicly available on February 27.

Intel just enabled XeSS 3 Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) across multiple Intel Arc discrete GPUs and Intel Core Ultra integrated GPUs with Xe2 or Xe3 cores. As a result, YouTuber Alva Jonathan decided to test how far Intel’s frame gen tech can go by testing it on an ASRock Arc A380 low-profile 6GB GPU.

While thArc A380 isn’t exactly Intel’s weakest GPU, it’s still an entry-level card and our review of the Intel Arc A380 showed that its gaming performance ranges from acceptable to abysmal. However, the latest driver drop, which enabled XeSS 3 on even the lowest-performing Intel GPUs, appears to have allowed budget gamers to gain extra frames (though they’re “fake”).

Jonathan’s test bench included the ASRock Arc A380 LP 6GB GPU, an AMD Ryzen 5 7500F CPU, an ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 motherboard, 32GB (2x16GB) Adata XPG DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, a 1TB Adata XPG Mars 980 Pro NVMe SSD, and an FSP Vita GM 750W PSU.

There’s one interesting part in the video, though. Alva said, “As a brief note here, Intel has not provided official drivers and software to multi-frame gen on the A-series or Arc B-series, so we have to a do a little modification of the driver or rather the library.” The creator copied two files — igxell.dll and igxess_fg.dll — from the Graphics_101.8362 folder to the Graphics_101.8452 folder, then installed the driver from the latter to reveal the XeSS Frame Generation Override dropdown menu in the Intel driver control panel.

They ran the test in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with the graphics set to the low preset, with Intel XeSS Super Resolution 2.0 enabled at Ultra Quality. They initially played with Frame Generation turned off, and the game achieved a base frame rate of 55-60 FPS. They then enabled Frame Generation using Intel XeSS (set to 4x in the driver control panel) and achieved an average of 135-140 FPS. However, note that x4 multi-frame generation (MFG) is quite taxing on hardware, reducing the base frame rate to 33-35 FPS, and there’s also noticeable “mouse lag.”

The creator said that for multi-frame generation x4, the recommended frame rate is between 180 and 240 FPS, as a base frame rate below 45 FPS often does not deliver a good experience. To fix this, they retested Intel XeSS Frame Generation, this time set to 3x. With this configuration, they achieved approximately 120 FPS in-game, giving them a base frame rate of around 40 FPS. While this is still below the ideal 45 FPS, the game showed improved input latency. Unfortunately, unlike Nvidia’s DLSS MFG, which can measure latency using the NV Reflex API, Intel lacks a comparable way to test it, so the creator could only judge it by feel.

This is great news for budget gamers: even though they still have to stick to low graphics settings, XeSS Frame Generation would give them a much smoother experience, even on basic hardware. This is also useful for those limited to integrated graphics, especially gaming handhelds like the MSI Claw family. The only downside is that the game should support Intel XeSS 2 MFG if you want to try this technology and see higher frame rates, which, hopefully, more developers would implement, especially with the arrival of Intel’s next-generation Panther Lake CPUs.

Intel has begun rolling out support for XeSS 3, its next-generation AI-powered upscaling technology with Multi-Frame Generation, through a new graphics driver update. First announced at last year’s Intel Tech Tour event in Arizona, XeSS Multi-Frame Generation offers similar 2x, 3x, and 4x modes (one, two, or three additional frames), much like Nvidia’s DLSS Multi-Frame Generation.

During the showcase, Intel said that XeSS 3 with Multi-Frame Generation will not require developers to update existing XeSS 2 titles to add support. Any game that already supports XeSS 2 frame generation will be compatible with XeSS MFG and can be enabled via an override in the Intel Graphics Software control panel. Depending on the game title, Intel also expects XeSS MFG settings to be available via in-game settings in the future. Since XeSS 3 supports Arc GPUs with XMX units, the new upscaling tech will be available on Arc A-series and B-series discrete GPUs as well as integrated graphics solutions powered by Xe2/Xe3.

In our early hands-on of Intel’s XeSS Multi-Frame Generation on a Panther Lake engineering system at Intel’s Tech Tour event, we found that the image quality was impressive, with no obvious artifacts that made the generated frames stand out. That said, input lag felt high for fast-paced shooters, and we were also left unconvinced by Intel’s reliance on baseline frame rates as a measure of acceptable input lag, as the two don’t always correlate as closely as the company implies.

The latest Intel Graphics Driver versions 32.0.101.8425 and 32.0.101.8362 also serve as the launch drivers for Intel’s newly announced Arc B390 and B370 iGPU solutions, available on the latest Core Ultra 3 series (codenamed Panther Lake) mobile CPUs. Additionally, the drivers also cover Intel’s existing Arc A-series and B-series discrete GPUs, along with a wide range of integrated graphics across the Core Ultra processor family, including Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake-S, and Arrow Lake-H.

Release notes for the latest driver additionally mention fixes for specific crashes seen in the Pragmata Sketchbook demo on certain Arc and Core Ultra hardware, as well as a correction to a display software issue where the Variable Refresh Rate range showcased incorrect values in the settings interface.

A number of known issues across Intel Arc and Core Ultra platforms have also been listed including color corruption and crashes in titles like Ghost of Tsushima, The Finals, No Man’s Sky, Star Citizen, and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, as well as intermittent graphical corruption in Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and benchmark instability in PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve Studio.

At CES 2026, we had the opportunity to sit down in Las Vegas, Nevada, with key AMD representatives on the future of their hardware stack. One of the most pertinent topics was AMD's ROCm software stack for accelerated computing.

With all of the eyes of the world on boosting AI performance, this is a crucial avenue for AMD, as Radeon Open Compute is a part of the backbone for its Instinct AI accelerators and powers performance in key AI workloads such as Inference. AMD also discusses its FSR 4, among other subjects, in this roundtable interview we attended at CES 2026.

Before we begin, some elements of the transcript have been edited for flow and clarity. As some speakers did not name themselves, we have identified them as AMD representatives and Journalists in the following passages.

To catch up on our other transcripts, check out our Intel Panther Lake Q&A, our FSR Redstone Q&A, and our roundup of Jensen Huang's Q&A. Ahead of reading this transcript, be sure to catch up on AMD's keynote below.

AMD Representative: So just in terms of introduction, I think you might know already, but Andrej is the chief software officer, so the head software guy at AMD, and I'm the product manager, among other things, for the for the for the consumer side, the client side, so Radeon, and stuff like that. Like Adrenalin, that's kind of my baby in terms of roadmap and stuff like that.

And so we wanted the opportunity. We told Stacey, anyone wants to talk to us about software? We love software, obviously. The key thing, of course, is, as you noticed in the keynote, it's a lot about AI, and I was actually complaining to Andrej saying, "I'm the gaming, I'm the fun stuff!" We still do a lot on that side as well, but the key thing and why Andrej and I are here is because we're going to introduce something in Adrenalin in the next couple of weeks, and you guys will probably get the decks and all that kind of stuff.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): I think it was released.

AMD Representative: The whole press deck? Just the high-level messaging; I think just the high-level messaging. Anyways, the point is, you'll get some information on this, what we call an "AI bundle." So, at a super high level — not to give away everything, but — at a super high level, we're going to make AI development easier on client machines, and the way we're going to do that is, within Adrenalin, we're going to have purely optional installation and configuration of a bunch of AI tools, and apps, and stuff like that, to let users get over the intimidation factor of the basic consumer saying, "No, I don't know what this stuff is. I'm intimidated." I'm not talking about the enthusiasts that you guys probably write to; I'm talking about the non-enthusiasts that are extremely intimidated and never click anything other than just "next."

So that's kind of the super high-level philosophy of what we're doing. It's the vision of AI everywhere on AMD, whether it's the most advanced data centers or the most basic client laptop there is, and it's a way of encouraging the world to — or users, at least, to understand, and not encourage but accommodate their journey if they want to explore that kind of stuff. So that's kind of the 30-second pitch.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): That's a great pitch. The way we look to that is, of course, Terry and I, and you guys, we are techies. You end up playing with stuff, exploring, researching everything. There is a community out there that we want to kind of introduce to AI without introducing too much complexity, because I — part of my role as Chief Software Officer is also the role of making sure that we use AI in all aspects of AMD, and we do that quite a lot in software; we're probably right now improving our productivity maybe 25 to 30% with just the AI tools and stuff, and I do a lot of keynotes and various conferences about that.

So the standard question at some conferences, they're not completely technical, that I try to do is I ask them, "How many of the attendees use some AI tool five times a day?" Ten or fifteen people come up. Then I ask them, "How many times you actually start a browser, like Google Chrome or something like that?" And of course, everybody raises up. Did they use Gemini by doing that? But they don't know.

So the way to kind of introduce AI and get over this huge thing of, "I'm afraid that my data will be out there," "Big Brother is watching," or whatever — doesn't really matter whether it's true or not — is a huge barrier to entry, we believe. So I'm very much into — we have ROCm, we have the big MI systems, like 455, running phenomenal inference, phenomenal training, but you want to go to a little guy, and they're saying, "I'm afraid of all that, and I don't know what to do so," and they have their Windows notebook. So what we want to do is to get the Windows notebook guy to be able to start using LLMs, to start using [image generation] and video design in the privacy of their computer. And that's why we moved ROCm to basically Ryzen Max or any, actually, of the new Ryzen platforms on both Linux and Windows. I like this, making this happen, so — sorry; this is an interruption. Your question?

Journalist 1: So I remember the high-level slides, there was a comment about ROCm 7.2 becoming a "common platform." Does that mean that the binaries between Windows and Linux — is that the same binary between Windows and Linux, for ROCm?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Yes. Well, the same binary is — well, the operating system are different, so the underlying kernel-level stuff needs to be different, since they're so different, but it is the same source, compiled for Windows and for Linux. It's kind of interesting — I don't know if that's us or you, but we tend to go into these numbers, like ROCm 7.2, and there was ROCm 7, and 6.5; there will be a ROCm 8. I don't think it really matters very much. I think what matters is which functionality that is offered, and which — each and every release is going to give you a little bit more functionality. What we are trying to do is to link that functionality on the big system to functionality on the PC to functionality on each individual platform.

Journalist 1: You actually just preempted one of my questions with the different GFX versions. So Strix Halo being 1150 versus RDNA 4 being GFX1200, versus MI350 being GFX950; these are all disparate, different IPs with different capabilities, and something that you guys don't have is a — at least, that's mainline/mainstream, at the moment, is a [NVIDIA] PTX equivalent. So you can't just write a program on Strix Halo and run it on MI350 because of stuff like different matrix instructions. What are you guys doing to improve that beyond just AMD, GC, and SPIR-V?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Well, at this point in time, you're right; this is a recompile for the target product. When we devised ROCm as — the the idea was, we want the fastest possible way from the application, from the user, to the hardware, and any introduction of the intermediate layer, like SPIR-V or PTX, to a certain extent, slows down that path. When we designed ROCm, it was originally designed for high-performance computing. In the eye was systems like El Capitan; so these huge research machines where, it doesn't really matter whether you're going to compile or not, it's — once you do it, you then solve the weather patterns for North America.

So, as it started from that and started expanding, we are looking at various options. SPIR-V is one of the options to actually get that portability. At this point in time, we're just not offering — I think we are looking at what the right options are. We found that at the user level. So what we're trying to do right now on Windows and Linux, with the AI bundle. The idea is you have your Ryzen Max notebook, or you have the new, what's the name?

AMD Representative: The Halo box.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): The Halo box. Sorry, I'm an engineer; I don't make product names. So you will be able to have the system that is pre-configured for either Linux or for Windows, with the right version of ROCm already installed. So we will abstract the difference for somebody who is going to use it in the application layer. But yes, if you are programming at the ROCm layer, it will still require recompile for some time. Great question, it's just, I don't have a perfect answer. I wish I had, but it is always a race, and the decision: what is more important? Because the resources are limited, and our technology is moving fast, and the use of our technology moves fast. So somewhere in between, you have this layer of ROCm and everything, and you have to make the decisions. What is the most important at this point?

Journalist 1: If you want my opinion on it, it would be ease of development for developers to develop on AMD, and recompiling is a barrier to that, especially if you're developing on — let's say, you're a startup, and you're developing on an MI300 box, then deploying to Strix Halo users, that's — you're going to hit sort of a barrier there in terms of your deployment. So that's why I was bringing it up.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Yeah, at minimum, we have one step, and it does happen sometimes that you have to touch up the code. Well, you probably don't know, but I actually used to be an engineer. So nobody allows me to code anything anymore, but I tend to know how things work reasonably well. So yeah, I agree, and thank you for that. But again — that's the balance of providing the next level, maybe the next format, or the next something, versus pausing to enable that commodity, which we at this time haven't finished yet.

Journalist 2: In the bundle, the AI bundle, is that focused more on developers or focused more on, like, an end user?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): We're talking about two step approach. The first one right now, the one that we're releasing, is released on Windows, and on Windows, you basically have an option as you download the new Adrenalin driver for your notebook, to click there saying that [you want the optional AI bundle.] What you're going to get there is PyTorch with ComfyUI on top of it, you're going to get Amuse, you're going to get LM Studio, and going to get Ollama. The idea is that it kind of does a little bit of a balance. Because, of course, Amuse and ComfyUI are more creator or entertaining type of applications, and then you have LM Studio, a little bit more user-friendly, and then Ollama, a little bit more developer-friendly.

So, on top of the PyTorch, you can actually load the models and train some of the models; memory is quite high. As we move forward and as we are looking at the Ryzen Halo and the new box, there is the approach of Windows, where I think we need to go with the balance of user and developer, because that's — Windows is not the most-used developer platform in the AI world; we know that. I mean, there is a Windows and gaming guru in our team. But as you go on Linux, what we are going to do is going to be basically pre-installed. Most of the distributions right now already have ROCm in a way, like in the box or some so, so it will be a pre-installed or ability to go to distribution and kind of get the ROCm on the system. So with that, we're enabling developers to 'out of the box,' and it starts working and that, not worrying about the right version of ROCm for the system [...] and then there will be tools at the top of that.

AMD Representative: I just want to add a little bit more, because you said "is it for developers or consumers?" For me, that's the traditional way I would look at the world. What I believe is happening, and I've seen it, is a new field called 'practitioners,' like people that are not developers, but — anyone can mess around with AI. You don't need coding, you don't need engineering, to mess around with AI. So we're trying to find a way to get these people that have the curiosity to get up and running with no barrier to entry, because what we've found is that some of these things that Andrej talked about would require — and we have it in our slides — it requires, like, 17 steps and configurations and pointing to GitHubs and this and that. So what we've done, essentially, our value-add, is we've taken all that away, and it's just like, optional: install or don't install, and everything's up and running.

In my mind, it's trying to — for developers, probably not so much; they don't — they wouldn't find this interesting, and for the moms and pops, probably not. But then the kind of enthusiasts that are like, "what can I do with AI?" Like everyone's done the image generation, that's kind of like a cheesy thing you do, and that's kind of the end of it, but what if you can develop your own Tetris game or something like that, with these tools, just with five or six commands? That's the kind of people that we want to show that Ryzen and Radeon are absolutely perfect to do that, and we're going to get you up and running in one click.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Well, and I'm sure there will be — sometimes in any innovation, you actually have the idea why you're doing that, but what ends up very interesting with all these different things is you actually — the use of it usually surprises you. Like the invention of electricity had various ideas why this is going to be very important, but one of the most important factors for the industry, you actually don't have to build your factory next to the water, where you actually have your running power. So it's a huge difference. What I think is going to happen is the applications like, I'm going to do my taxes. I don't want to do my taxes asking ChatGPT, because then all my tax information is in the cloud, and I don't know if [Revenue Canada or the IRS], they are watching that. I don't know. People are paranoid. If I know that I disconnected my computer from the Internet, and now I can ask for help, and how do I, whatever, "pay less tax," right? That's the cool thing. I think a lot of people will find these kinds of applications very, very interesting over time. All of us are trying to do something more, and what he said, we are trying to get across the barrier. So this is really the AI adoption, and the thing that's going to get people to understand AI and this revolution better.

Journalist 1: So on that — you said that PyTorch would be installed, or that's an option. Would — I assume that that would also install ROCm and all the prerequisite? [AMD representative nods.] Okay. Just double-checking that that would — okay.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): The whole story, because [...] We would want all our systems to be linked to the PyTorch stable. They're not yet, but they are linked to the latest and greatest steps, but in order to do the installation, you have to go to PyTorch, and then you need to pick the right version of ROCm. So that's what we are abstracting from you.

Journalist 1: Okay. I'm asking because I have — the laptop that I've been using is the HP ZBook. It's the G1A, so I've been playing with it and sort of seeing how the ROCm experience has developed in the past six months or so. It's come a lot further on Linux than it has on Windows, and for developers, I think that that's probably the correct move. But I guess, the largest part — my audience is much more technical, and — sort of, the developer community. Something that I see as lacking is documentation, and while this abstraction is good for the people that you're talking about, for the people that — yeah, need to go, like — that do AI daily, and develop for AMD, the documentation is sort of spread around 15 different places, and there's no [collated] source that I can just go, "bookmark this page," and I can just reference that page.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Great feedback. Well, the only thing I can say is that, about six months ago, it was 30 places.

Journalist 1: Yes!

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Yes, so I think we are moving in the right direction.

Journalist 1: ROCm from 2023 is completely unrecognizable to ROCm today. Let me put you that way.

AMD Representative: And in that time, ROCm was truly not a very high priority for our consumer products, our client products; that's changed, so that's — you'll see the investment and the throughput and the roadmap, bringing that stuff that we do for the MI products to the client side, the Ryzens and the Radeons.

Journalist 1: So then on top of that, will all libraries available for MI also be available for client? Because I know that that's —

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): That's a part. As you look at the consumer products, we just need to make sure that the libraries are optimized for these products. So will they be available? Yeah, the simple answer, if I were unfair, is yes, they are. But are they optimized? Not all them are optimized yet, so we are gradually working towards. It's a journey, because the ROCm system is huge, and we again, have a number of products, and especially if you get into consumer space, there are slight differences from product to product; the version of graphics, the available memory, the throughput — you have to take all that in consideration.

So it takes a lot of time to make sure that we do it justice, but optimizations are going to come down, and we are going then to start focusing on the use cases more than — We're going to try to understand what are the more important use cases on the consumer type platforms, because they are different. Like on the big MI systems, there is just a very clear set of use cases for OpenAI, a clear use case for Microsoft, for Oracle, and so on.

Journalist 1: You have your dozen large customers, and that's sort of what everybody else is doing in that space, whereas in the consumer space, you have millions of single customers, all doing different things.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Exactly.

Journalist 1: Roughly similar workloads, but all different workloads in their own way.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Yes. So that's why we need software product management to tell the teams what to do.

[group laughing]

AMD Representative: Yeah, no, for sure, and I mean, speaking of that, what we definitely would like to do, like this bundle; give us feedback. Like, hopefully even before we launch. I don't know if we can change anything during launch, but as Andrej said, the software, the version doesn't matter. It's an ongoing train, and we can always add things and improve things. So I'd really value your opinion, both your opinion on this AI bundle, in terms of "is it useful? Is it easy? Is it useless? Is it interesting?"

I need experts to help me understand how [well] it's going to be perceived, because I think what I know what's going to happen: it's going to be full of gamers pissed off and saying, "Why are you putting AI in my system?" And I have the response ready: "well, it's optional!" If you don't want it? Don't do it. It's options, and so I want to try and find the balance of pissed off gamers versus these 'practitioners' that are going to say, "yeah, this is cool. Now I can play around with it instead of trying to read 30 documentations on how to get it set up and running." Anyways, hopefully you guys can play with it before we launch it, and just let us know what you think.

Journalist 1: If you want — and it's — I probably shouldn't say this — a specific green company with DGX Spark did a very good job; if you look at their GitHub, the DGX Spark playbooks.

AMD Representative: Yeah.

Journalist 1: It was ... really good. If you do — if that is something that comes with that Halo box that was announced, that would be great.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Thank you, and, yes — we are looking at — so again, the Halo [box] is going to, again, have two options. So there will be a Windows option, which is more or less going to be the follow-up of the AI bundle. So it is more like a user-friendly type of thing, allowing — and there will be developer tools, examples and so on, but on the Linux side, again, it's going to be — okay, there's a set of distributions, so only one distribution will happen yet, we haven't decided exactly — which is going to have ROCm come in the box, so you just get that, but it's going to come pre-loaded with distribution, but you also can, of course, use the distribution to load it and with some play examples.

Journalist 2: Terry, you had mentioned that there was a big shift in investment for ROCm on the client side—

AMD Representative: Not a shift, an addition.

Journalist 2: An addition. I'm wondering why that addition came to be. Was it just a bet on these 'practitioners' that you're talking about, or is there —

AMD Representative: We firmly believe, as AMD, that AI is inevitable. It's the future of computing across the board. There's so many scenarios, whether it be Andrej talking about his developers within AMD being 20% more productive, or my kid creating a school project in a week, that we — since we're the enablers, we're the chip manufacturers of AI, we also have a lot of input into the experience and the software that goes to enable it.

So the great value that I believe my team has added is simplicity, simplifying things. Everything we did with Adrenalin, with our first Control Panel, even with Catalyst and stuff like that, was with the mentality of simplifying tasks and getting people over the intimidation barrier. So the reason why we're investing in it is we believe that a lot of people will be "doing AI," whatever that means to you, and you don't need a super computer to do it. You can do it on your Strix laptop, or your Radeon 7090, or whatever it is. We want to enable the use of these things for these people. It's as simple as that in my mind.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): It's also a progression, because when I was talking about ROCm, our focus with ROCm and MI-type products was high-performance computing; that's where we came from. So you're coming then, enabling Lawrence Livermore or supercomputers like that, and that was what we really pushed for. As we started shifting to enabling more, to enabling either smaller enterprises doing high performance, or then getting into enabling hyperscalers using AI, obviously the spectrum of possible applications expands. We are really the only ones that can fairly easily switch from from one type of graphics, like MI graphics, to our Radeon graphics, and the CPUs also, and port between two systems very easily. It was just an expansion of our fulcrum, I'd say.

AMD Representative: I think the key is, it's not a redistribution of resourcing; it's additional resourcing in an area that we didn't play in before — which nobody played in before, because didn't exist a few years ago. But I want my gaming crowd, my enthusiast crowd, to not hate AI, and if they want to use it, I'm going to make it easy for them to do it. Not forcing it down their throat, of course — I'm not going to say "This is it! You got to do it! Forget gaming! Don't do this!"

Journalist 2: At this point, you guys are the villain. The OpenAI DRAM situation; that's the villain right now.

AMD Representative: But in our history, we're always afraid of being the villain.

Journalist 2: Sure. [chuckling]

AMD Representative: AMD has always been like — we don't want to piss off the market, we're open source, we're responsive — at least, that's my perception; I don't know what the market says, but we really believe in the open sourcing model of everything, as you've seen, versus the CUDA versus the ROCm kind of thing. So it's in our mentality to to provide but not force.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Collaboration and listening to the voice of customers.

Journalist 1: So on the open source stuff, FSR 4; that — happened, with the whole release of the libraries, and then the sort-of "taking back." Are you guys still planning on open sourcing FSR 4?

AMD Representative: I don't — not that I know of...?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Well, when, when the accidental release happened, we were not ready for it. Our longer term plan is open sourcing, and you've seen that everything was on GPUOpen recently. At this point in time we are not open sourcing some of the core technology, but we are providing it in the form of a library for [...] of course, and we are finding the way to open source it in a way not to give advantage to our green friends

Journalist 1: Fair, but also, I would say that they have a lot of manpower, and, in my opinion, at least, it is unlikely that they would need any code from you guys.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Well, you would be surprised —

Journalist 1: Oh, I know how much sharing of — how much open source is important. My point is more that it's sort of — I guess, in the mobile space — sort of this space that — and by mobile, I mean — right, because Arm's scaler, super resolution, is based on FSR — 1, I believe.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Right. [ed. Arm's Accuracy Super Resolution is actually based on FSR 2.]

Journalist 1: And that is a place where upscaling can be very useful, so it's more that side of it, in the more mobile space where — well, yes, you guys partnered with Samsung; that's not necessarily a major market for AMD in particular, and I would like to see those technologies sort of trickle down to super-power-constrained environments.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Let me just put it in very simple way: we are fully committed to work as openly as possible, and in some areas we are basically fully open, like the area of ROCm. In the areas of graphics, we started the GPUOpen with that idea, that we're going to share the technology, and we continue doing that. It's simply what happened with FSR 4, we were just not ready at that point in time; it was just a mistake, but open sourcing is on our path and in our mind.

Journalist 2: So just to clarify: that's the plan for FSR 4?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): That's the long term plan. So it's — I cannot at this point in time commit to any timelines on that, because we were looking at that. But in general, we are — the whole technology, about FSR and Redstone, everything was was based on the idea of, we are going to provide the industry with the best possible algorithms to use that.

Journalist 2: I appreciate you bringing up the question, because there's a dynamic right now, certainly with ROCm and CUDA that echoes a few years ago with — I mean, to a much different scale, but sort of echoes this openness approach with FSR and DLSS initially. So, yeah.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Well, FSR 4 is the first in the series of technology where we decided to hold it back a little bit, but the long-term plan is definitely being very open.

Journalist 1: So going back a few pieces, talking about client devices and getting software working on it. I think we both have this: What's the point of the NPU? [to Journalist 2] You probably get it from a different perspective than I hear —

Journalist 2: Sure, sure.

Journalist 1: — but I know my perspective is more on the "why NPU, because how do I program it?" Is there any plans for integrating NPU — being able to program the NPU via ROCm or via something like OpenCL? Or is it just going to be through the like DirectML or whatever Windows is doing right now?

AMD Representative: How much can I say? [laughing]

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): So you asked few different questions I get. It's a fair set of questions. The way I'm looking at it is that I cannot tell you what are the long-term plans at this point. We just need to align within AMD when we are going to discuss the long-term plans. If you look at the NPU, the genesis of the NPU is the Windows experiences. I think it's a very interesting concept, having a device that that allows Windows experiences to be better at the low power at a very — so, if you look at the limited number of use cases that are coming to windows and accelerated with Windows, I think the device becomes very, very useful, especially because of the low power to achieve a whole lot. The programming of the NPU is a different construct, and that's a little bit of an issue. Everybody has their own idea how it should be programmed. We have our own test stack, used by some ISVs, through to Windows ML, and what Microsoft is trying to do right now is trying to provide the abstraction layer, and then basically a switch hidden somewhere in between, so you can go on a CPU, NPU, or a GPU.

I think that's going to bring the next level of usefulness, because with DirectML before, the idea was that you as a developer, gaming developer, if you want, you don't worry about — you just use that interface and everything works, and you have interoperability and everything. I don't think it's going to be like OpenCL or anything on the side. Microsoft has the right path right now of providing the high-level interface through which you're going to be able to access all these devices, and the actual acceleration platform software will probably not matter for the application developers. The question, if you look at developers who would like to write the code to accelerate these devices faster, I think the state of art right now is three devices are different, and you will have to do use different programming approaches for it, and that's, I mean, of the various manufacturers

Journalist 1: Yeah, I — the point is, so like — a CPU, you write C code, and it will run just about anywhere. A GPU, okay, you need to go more specialized: CUDA, ROCm, SYCL, OpenCL, whatever. And then you have the NPU, which is even more distinct — again, it sort of comes back to, like — currently, your NPU has a lot of TOPS, it has a lot of compute there, and I want — versus say, the GPU; for RDNA 3.5 specifically, which doesn't have a ton of compute, and I want to access that NPU compute. It's difficult to be able to do that, because there's no — like, I can't just write C code. I can't just go write ROCm on it; I need something else, and it's not very easy to use. So I guess my question is, are there any plans to improve that experience?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): We are, at this point in time, focusing on enabling the Windows approach, so enabling the access to Windows ML, and of course, continuing to polish the Vitis libraries, which is a specific way of accessing the NPU. The problem is that the technology is moving very fast, and if you look at the architectures of our NPU versus, let's say, Qualcomm's NPU, it's completely different. That happens in the industry when things start and then things converge later over time. So I think we are at that point that these approaches haven't really converged in, like Microsoft is trying to put the layer at the moment, but they don't have this year's answer for you.

Journalist 2: This is completely changing topics, but this is my own curiosity: when are we getting multi-frame generation and AFMF 2?

AMD Representative: Well, obviously I can't commit to when things are coming. All I can say is, you'll have to wait and see? We have a roadmap. We're not here to disclose upcoming stuff. I can't say it's coming three months, or six months, or two months, or 10 months, but — you know. Gaming is a focus. There's a lot of people with a lot of passion with AMD, and we've never stopped focusing on gaming or caring about what the community wants, and so, there's roadmaps. [...] Yeah, unfortunately, we can't. Upcoming things; I can't — primarily we're here to talk about either the AI bundle or just pick Andrej's brain about high-level software concepts, but I'll be happy to give you an update when we have it.

Journalist 2: Gotcha.

Journalist 1: So, I think one of the questions I have is with regards to, like — this may sound weird at first, but like, features within the software stack for gaming, specifically with regards to stuff like video ENCODE? Are there any plans to speed up integration of FFmpeg and getting that stuff out quicker so that — because, like, RDNA 4 still doesn't have very good FFmpeg support.

AMD Representative: My simple answer is, I'm not seeing a huge demand or huge request for anything like that at this point. So if there is, and you're aware of it.

Journalist 1: Like, streaming, like, I know RDNA 3 has a fairly bad bug in it with the AV1 encoding. That caused a lot of headache, and while RDNA 4 fixes that, there's still — it feels like it's been — what, about, nine months since the launch? And it still feels like the software support isn't there for what I would argue are key fundamental features of the GPU in a gaming context. Because lots of people stream, lots of people. They record videos, they encode videos, and it feels like while for gaming, Radeon is great; if you want to do more than just that —

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): You know, that's a very good feedback. So I have to admit, I don't know all the details, but that's something that would be interesting discussing. [...]

AMD Representative: I stand by my initial answer. Like, I personally haven't seen a huge demand or upheaval or request for it, and so if you're saying that there is, I'd like to very much follow up.

Journalist 1: There was a fairly public backlash to the poor state of AMD encoding about fifteen? Eighteen months ago. Remember that streamer?

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Yeah, 15-18 months ago, I would — I think, after RDNA 4 I haven't seen anything.

Journalist 1: It still feels like — again, I don't know how much of that is inertia, but I've been trying to use FFmpeg, and it's not been the greatest experience.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Okay, well, we'd love your maybe even more detailed feedback, and Stacey, if you can help us, maybe coordinate that.

AMD Representative: Yeah, talk to me directly, or through Stacey, and let me just get your concerns; let me figure it out. If it's something we can fix, and if there is a feasible path to delivering it, I can tell you that we'll do it.

Journalist 1: Okay.

AMD Representative: It's simple as that. It may take three months, six months, nine months, but if it's realistic, we will make it happen. There's no reason for us not to, right? Other than the fact that Andrej and I didn't — like, this is, new information.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): It's a lot of new information for me as well, and that's why I was not ready. We have deep video experts on the team, of course, and I'm sure they would, they would want to get the feedback. [...] We need to give the right resources.

AMD Representative: Just go through Stacy and give me any type of feedback on the driver, not just the video, not just whatever things we're talking about. I've never really — I've been doing this for 25 years, and I know a lot of the journalists very, very well, and they ping me and they say, "you got to do this, or this, and that." So I'd like to encourage you guys to just — don't hesitate. You know, go through Stacey, and it'll come to me, and you'll see stuff showing up on the roadmap just because you suggested it, or recommended it. That's the way we work.

Journalist 2: I did have a clarification on the AI bundle; so, you said it'll show up when you go to install the latest driver; will it live somewhere in Adrenalin where you can go and get it later? If you don't choose to install it.

AMD Representative: We have — so we introduced, I guess we call it internally DIME; it's the Download and Install Manager. It's a new little icon in the task tray, which we launched [a few months ago] that keeps your system up to date. So in there, it'll have options to select things, deselect things, keep things up to date, don't keep things up to date. So we have this download manager that would have all that stuff in there. So, you don't only have one chance to do it; you can do it later. You can not ever do it, or you can do it and then get rid of it.

Journalist 2: So you won't manage anything inside Adrenalin? It's just inside that download manager?

AMD Representative: It's — for me, it's part of Adrenalin, but when you say Adrenalin, for me, it's the whole package. Are you talking about the UI?

Journalist 2: Yes.

AMD Representative: The UI, yeah — there's a link to the download manager within Adrenalin, and that takes you to that, but everything's going to be tied in together as much as possible. But yeah, the simple answer is yes, you'll be able to install, uninstall, update anything at any point.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): Good thing you were here; I didn't know the answer to that.

AMD Representative: That's my area.

Journalist 2: Just wanted to make sure you don't have to DDU if you want to change your selection. [chuckling]

AMD Representative: So, we don't — I mean, the thing is, we have a pretty good uninstaller that eliminated the need for DDU, at least in my opinion.

Journalist 2: I have a lot of emails with Matthew and various other people that suggest otherwise. You still need to DDU

AMD Representative: Well they tell you to use DDU, right?

Journalist 2: Yeah! Oh yeah.

AMD Representative: Yeah, I know — it's an internal thing. But anyways, it doesn't matter; if it works, it works. We did spend time to do everything DDU does within Adrenalin itself, so you don't have to go searching for a third-party tool, but enthusiasts are enthusiasts, and if that's the path they want to take I'm cool with that. Sure. I have no, no —

Journalist 2: I'm also swapping a bunch of components in; not a realistic scenario.

AMD Representative: Sure! I mean, you're a reviewer, right? So at some point you do want to clean system.

Journalist 1: You mean the average person isn't swapping their GPU three times a week?

[group laughing]

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): I think I mentioned that already; everybody, maybe short of Stacey, is a geek here; a complete geek. And you don't do things that the normal people do with their systems, and we need to think about that sometimes in the —

AMD Representative: Especially, this is a true story — so Andrej told my development team "I want to try this AI bundle," and they're like, babying him and saying make sure you do this and that, and he's like, "no, don't give me instructions. Just give it to me and let me play with it like a real person would."

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): We tend to do that. There is these 25 different switches that are going to do this different and better. Well, I'm interested in these 25 switches, and you probably aren't. 95% of the users just want to clean the damn thing. Terry and I are spending a lot of time discussing, like, how to actually make it [...] It's two different types of users: the everyday user who's just going to occasionally look at some feature and readjust it so the game plays better, or maybe get automatic suggestions and stuff, and somebody else who wants to go with a page with all the possible options and try them all. These are two different personas, and we need to cater to both.

[off-topic discussion]

Journalist 2: Okay, I do have a question for the handhelds and the experience of Adrenalin on handhelds, which isn't optimal, I would say — it's rough. Intel yesterday, when they were launching Panther Lake, they announced they're doing this whole handheld initiative, and I'm wondering if you were working with partners like Asus or Lenovo to optimize that experience of Adrenalin on handhelds.

AMD Representative: What part? What part of optimized; like the day zero, driver delivery?

Journalist 2: No, no; driver delivery is good. I'm more so talking about the additional features within Adrenalin, getting those things — maybe not through the GUI itself, but into — you know, Asus does it with Armoury Crate — into the actual software, and, more importantly, getting those features working with SteamOS, because we've seen a — especially from Lenovo —

AMD Representative: Totally separate. So let me park SteamOS, because that's Linux. The other stuff; we have something called ADLX. ADLX is our API for any OEM to take our software features and enable it through their UI, so there's no feature that's in Adrenalin that cannot be enabled in a third-party UI through ADLX. The OEMs can turn on any feature they want; any feature they don't want, they can hide, but that's the key, is the ADLX. With that API, any feature we have on the Windows graphics side is available. SteamOS, totally different beast. That's their own — they control their own destiny, they can turn on whatever features they want, but we would have to do some hand-holding or partnership, because it's not—

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): We do help them. RADV and all of this development is always a partnership; all of these open source projects, sometimes it looks like the community is doing everything, but in reality, they're usually doing 80% of the work.

AMD Representative: Can I deep dive on what you said, though? What do you think — what do you feel is not there for the handhelds that should be there? Is there something specific?

Journalist 2: On Linux? Or on—

AMD Representative: No, no, on the ASUS and the Lenovos.

Journalist 2: I think it's just a cleaner — I mean, ASUS has done a good job of it, actually integrating the most prominent features between RSR and AFMF, those being the key ones in that form factor. Lenovo hasn't. I haven't checked up on MSI lately, but when I originally checked up on MSI, it was bad. So just a cleaner unification of these features, because if I'm going to Best Buy or wherever to pick up one of these handhelds, and I hear that it has this AMD chip in it, I have a certain expectation of features that I've heard about that are very relevant in those form factors. Namely, RSR and AFMF.

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): That is probably more a question for OEMs than for us. The way you've just said it is — it tells you a little bit more about DNA of the OEM itself. Like Lenovo, is more of the production, commercial type of a system, so their handheld platform represents that DNA. Not that it's the — it's the intention of the Asus is much more consumer oriented. So it's just something that — we can't help what we cannot control.

Journalist 2: Sure. I did want to follow up on the Linux thing, really, really quickly. Again, those features are still relevant on on Linux platform, and I would say they're — from my experience, that's been a —

Andrej Zdravkovic (AMD): I tend to agree with that. But again, that's the — we can provide the feedback to developers, well, let's put it that way. It's not us blocking implementation of any features. It is more of, again, that type of OEM using our stuff. But on both of these, do send us your feedback. Within my team, there is a group that does the the OEM development and support, so picks up the stuff that Terry designs, and takes these ADLX features, again, 100% open. Everything that we do is open to any OEM, so they can pick it up; we just enable them as much as we can. So the more you give us, the more I can, on next meeting say, "okay, this is the feedback that we received."

AMD Representative: And not only that, we can also share with Microsoft, because Microsoft is extremely, extremely interested in working with us on beating Steam.

Journalist 2: They're doing not the best job with it right now.

AMD Representative: They're not, and so a lot of it is that they're looking for our expertise.

[Session ends]

At CES last week, Nvidia unveiled its new DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution technology, along with 6X Multi Frame Generation. Now, after initially teasing a January 13 rollout and then quietly delaying the feature, the company is rolling out DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution to all Nvidia app users.

"Today, NVIDIA are rolling out DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution to all NVIDIA app users. Announced at CES last week, DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution introduces a 2nd generation transformer model for DLSS Super Resolution, delivering state-of-the-art image quality for all GeForce RTX GPUs in over 400 games and apps," the company stated. Users can access the latest features by simply opening the Nvidia app and letting it auto-update.

Nvidia claims its second-generation Super Resolution is its most sophisticated yet, utilizing 5x the compute power compared to the first-generation transformer model. Since its launch in beta last week, community tests have confirmed that, while DLSS 4.5 works on older RTX 30 and even 20 series GPUs, warnings about performance lossses of up to 20%+ ring true.

Nvidia says DLSS 4.5's second-gen transformer model should hopefully cut down on some of the distracting artifacts synonymous with DLSS. DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution purportedly reduces "shimmering" or flickering on static surfaces, as well as ghostly trails and after-images.

In our short hands-on time at CES 2026, we definitely noted an impressive improvement over the existing model. Per our previous report: "What we didn't expect is that DLSS 4.5 actually makes certain lighting and particle effects look richer and more natural, too." For users of the RTX 50-series and 40-series RTX GPUs, the Tensor Cores of those cards should take some of the increased resource load thanks to support for accelerated FP8 processing.

While this week's headline launch is Super Resolution, Nvidia also highlighted that its existing DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation is now available on over 250 games and apps — but there's no sign of 6x DLSS Multi-Frame Generation, also unveiled at this year's CES, just yet. Other updates to the Nvidia app include a new Debug Mode that can instantly disable all overclocks and voltage tweaks in case of system instability.

AMD released FSR4 Redstone a couple of weeks back, finally giving Team Red a frame generation technology that could go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s DLSS. However, much like its rival, AMD decided to limit it to RDNA 4, so only gamers with RX 9000-series GPUs can take advantage of the new features that arrive with the latest drivers from the company. Reddit user u/AthleteDependent926 is not having this, though, as they created a workaround that allowed older RDNA 3 GPUs to take advantage of the tech.

According to the Redditor, this technique only works with RDNA 3 hardware and Linux operating systems. Aside from this, you need to install Valve’s Proton compatibility layer to make it work properly. But after you follow all the steps correctly, you should be able to enjoy machine-learning-powered neural radiance caching and ray regeneration even on older Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs. These features complement the already existing AI upscale and frame generation that dropped with FSR4, which was also limited to AMD’s latest graphics cards.

Incidentally, the company accidentally leaked the entire source code for FSR4 in August 2025, which allowed modders to reverse engineer the technology and make it compatible with RDNA 2 cards. Both the FSR4/RDNA 2 and FSR4/RDNA 3 mods allowed older hardware to enjoy these new features, but at a much higher performance cost. According to u/AthleteDependent926, FSR4 Redstone is much more demanding than FSR3, with the latency on their AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT at 0.13ms — almost double the reported 0.07ms achieved with the older frame gen tech, but still at an acceptable level.

Some gamers were livid when they discovered that RDNA 3 could run FSR4 Redstone, saying that AMD is no different from Nvidia for artificially limiting the performance of its older hardware. However, others were quick to point out that AMD could only be doing this to help boost the sales of its current Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs, and that once the sales of these graphics cards start to taper, they’re hoping that Team Red would eventually officially release it for older models that can still run it reliably.

Nvidia has taken a U-turn as it is bringing back support for 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX games on RTX 50 series GPUs, after it silently discontinued the tech earlier this year in February. In a recent press announcement for the latest GeForce Game Ready drivers, the company has confirmed that it is adding custom support for top-played PhysX-accelerated games, offering full performance on the latest RTX 50 series GPUs, in line with existing support on previous generation GPUs.

PhysX is one of Nvidia’s oldest technologies, originating in 2004 when the company acquired Ageia. Designed as a physics simulation SDK, it handled ragdolls, cloth, particles, fluids, and other advanced physics effects. Its core promise was to simply offload physics work from the CPU to the GPU for better performance and more detailed effects. The supported games are:

• Alice: Madness Returns
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• Batman: Arkham City
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• Borderlands 2
• Mafia II
• Metro 2033
• Metro: Last Light
• Mirror’s Edge
  
  Batman: Arkham Asylum is slated to be supported in 2026.

After Nvidia adapted the tech to run on GeForce GPUs, PhysX found its way into popular AAA game titles, including the Batman Arkham trilogy, Borderlands 2, The Witcher 3, Metro: Last Light, Metro: Exodus, Metro 2033, Mirror's Edge, The Witcher 3, and several older Assassin’s Creed releases.

By the late 2010s, PhysX adoption slowed significantly as more flexible, cross-platform physics solutions emerged. One of the biggest limitations was its reliance on CUDA, which tied it exclusively to Nvidia GPUs and restricted it from competing hardware, consoles, and mobile devices. Nvidia also gradually dropped support for certain features, leading some developers, such as Warframe’s team in 2018, to move to custom frameworks built on or inspired by PhysX.

The latest Game Ready driver update also brings game optimizations for the upcoming Winter Offensive update on Battlefield 6 ahead of its December 9th release. Nvidia says that gamers can expect average frame rates to increase by 3.8 times, enabling up to 460 frames per second on desktops, and 310 frames per second on RTX 50 series laptops at 4K ultra settings with DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation, and DLSS Super Resolution enabled. Additionally, the latest drivers bring improved fidelity of DLSS Ray Reconstruction on Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

To download the latest drivers, visit the official Nvidia driver download page, select your product from the drop-down menus, choose your operating system, and click search. Alternatively, you can download and use the Nvidia app, which can automatically detect your hardware and install the latest driver for you.

It is great to see legendary old hardware that is still able to work in the latest PC builds. A prime example of old mingling with new in a magical way was provided by Omores on YouTube a few days ago. The TechTuber managed to coax their ancient Creative 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB graphics card to work in their cutting-edge AMD Ryzen 9 9900X-powered Windows 11 PC.

This is no simple feat. Nevertheless, you can see that Omores got a 1998 vintage 3D accelerator, using services written for a 1996 OS, with an experimental 64-bit driver from 2006, to run on a PC using an OS from 2011, powered by a processor from 2024.

To kick off the above video, Omores pitched a simple question. Could a classic Voodoo2 graphics card work with modern hardware, and on Windows 11? “Sounds impossible,” because of the 64-bit driver necessity of Microsoft’s newest OS, the TechTuber openly pondered.

Omores then explained that he would be looking specifically at the Voodoo2, as the original Voodoo trips up with processors faster than 1.0 GHz, while the Voodoo2 doesn’t suffer any such limitations. Thus, mused the intrepid old-meets-new experimenter, a combination of the right drivers and a working PCI to PCIe connection should get the iconic 3dfx card and one of AMD’s latest and greatest platforms playing nicely together.

Instead of jumping in the deep end, Omores took viewers on a journey with this tech tale of May to September. After introducing the hardware solution that could physically get a 1998 3D accelerator hooked up to a modern AM5 motherboard system (a StarTech PCI-E to PCI enclosure), it was time to check OS/software compatibility.

First off, the unmatched hardware combo was shown working with Windows 98 installed on the system. This confirmed, with reference drivers, that the hardware side of the equation was fine. Further confirmation that this disparate hardware concoction posed no issues came from benchmarking in games/apps like Quake 2 and 3D Mark 2001 SE.

Next, Omores moved to Win 10 32-bit, the last 32-bit OS release from Microsoft. An enthusiast community developed 32-bit driver for the 3dfx was used here, and it worked well.

Moving to Windows 10 64-bit would be more complicated. However, Omores explained that in 2006 a dev called Ryan Nun (AKA Colourless) published an experimental 3dfx Glide Project for x64 – based on research into original Win NT (1996) drivers. These new kernel drivers worked for Omores on a Win10 64-bit install, with a fix that was made for XP systems.

The TechTuber saw no real reason why Windows 11 shouldn’t work the same way after driver signature enforcement was removed. But, of course, things weren’t so simple. Surprisingly, a change of PCI slot cleared an early hiccup, getting the system to the same easily fixed error point where the Win 10 64-bit stalled (the Mapmem error).

“We now have a 3D accelerator from 1998, using a driver that relies on services written for Windows NT from 1996, successfully running in Windows 11 23H2,” wryly observed Omores. We’d add that the CPU was a powerful, ultra-modern one, from 2024.

Perhaps the TechTuber was pushing his luck by trying to run two Voodoo2s in SLI on the same system, next. Indeed, using his second Voodoo2, a Joytech Apollo 3D Fast II 12MB, which isn’t a perfect glitch-free runner, caused this delicately teetering concoction of hardware to topple in Windows 11.

Nvidia released a hotfix driver recently that fixes performance issues in games, as a result of a buggy cumulative update Microsoft released for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. A few X posters, including Sebastian Castellanos, have published benchmark results showing almost a 50% performance boost in games from the new Nvidia hotfix driver in some titles.

The performance issues from Microsoft's latest update are likely far more egregious than most people were expecting. Sabastian saw a whopping 47% improvement in average FPS in Assassin's Creed Shadows from Nvidia's last outgoing stable driver 581.80 compared to its latest 581.94 hotfix driver. Similarly, 1% lows were 46% better on the hotfix driver as well.

Another X poster, Daniel Nowak, also shared similar performance behavior in the same game, but his comparison was made with a slightly older driver. Daniel saw a 65% performance improvement going from driver 581.57 to Nvidia's new hotfix driver. These performance regressions are massive, but only affect certain games according to Nvidia, so it might not be worth upgrading to 581.94 if you are not experiencing any noticeable performance drops. The 581.94 hotfix driver is considered a "beta" driver, so there may be additional bugs introduced by installing it.

Performance issues started cropping up with Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 October 2025 update KB5066835, which introduced a bug that could reduce FPS in certain circumstances. This bug has yet to be fixed by Microsoft and is the reason why Nvidia is now stepping in to fix the issue for themselves, at least for Nvidia GPU owners. Sadly, AMD and Intel GPUs are also affected by this bug, but no new drivers have come out yet from either vendor to fix the issue.

This latest hotfix update is quite different from what we are accustomed to seeing Nvidia fixing with these drivers. Earlier this year, most (if not all) of Nvidia's hotfix drivers were dedicated to fixing issues surrounding RTX 50 series GPUs, including crashes, clock speed issues, and display-related problems. With driver 581.94, Nvidia is fixing an issue that was caused by Microsoft, not itself.

Nvidia just released the GeForce Hotfix Display Driver 581.94, which it says fixes performance issues seen in some games after Microsoft released KB5066835. The problematic mandatory patch was released in October and affected systems that ran Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, which introduced a bug that reduced game FPS in some instances, according to Windows Latest. Since this is a mandatory cumulative update, future Windows patches are also expected to experience the same problem, so it’s highly recommended that you download and apply the latest GPU driver if you experience some performance loss while gaming after installing the update.

While Nvidia says that only some games were affected by the bug, it seems to have been significant enough for it to release a hotfix instead of waiting for its regular driver update release schedule. Team Green says that GPU drivers are incredibly complex, especially as it has to deal with a potentially infinite number of hardware and software configurations. Because of this, it usually releases driver updates in line with major hardware and game launches after extensive testing.

However, this means that major issues could remain unaddressed as existing users wait for Nvidia’s regular release cadence. Because of this, the company drops hotfixes, which are released in advance to resolve major issues as soon as possible. For example, when the newly-launched 50-series GPUs started crashing and producing black screens, Nvidia dropped a hotfix outside of its usual release cadence to address the problem. When some issues remained unsolved, the company dropped another hotfix just a week after that to further address crashes and clock speeds.

Windows Updates have recently been breaking a lot of stuff, including one that made USB keyboards and mice unusable in the Windows Recovery Environment and another that triggers BitLocker and encrypts your hard drive without warning. Thankfully, Nvidia stepped up relatively quickly and released an update to fix what the Windows Update broke. It’s unclear if Intel and AMD will release driver updates of their own to deal with KB5066835, especially as neither company has acknowledged any Windows Update-related problems so far, but Windows Latest said that GPUs from Intel and AMD are also suffering from performance issues brought about by this particular patch.

After a turbulent weekend of updates and clarifications, AMD has published an entire web page to assuage user backlash and reaffirm its commitment to continued support for its RDNA 1 and RDNA 2-based drives, following a spate of confusion surrounding its recent decision to put Radeon RX 5000 and 6000 series cards in "maintenance mode." This comes after AMD had to deny that the RX 7900 cards were losing USB-C power supply moving forward, even though the drive changelog said something quite different.

Just last week, AMD released a new driver update for its graphics cards, and it went anything but smoothly. First, the wrong drivers were uploaded, and even after that was corrected, several glaring errors in the release notes required clarification. AMD was forced to correct claims about its RX 7900 cards, but at the time clarified that, indeed, RX 5000 and 6000 graphics cards were entering "Maintenance Mode," despite some RX 6000 cards being only around four years old.

Now, though, AMD has either rolled back that decision or someone higher up the food chain has made a new call, as game optimizations are back on the menu for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs.

"We’ve heard your feedback and want to clear up the confusion around the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 driver release," AMD said in a statement. It went on to confirm that there were separate drivers for RX 7000 and 9000, and RX 5000 and 6000 GPUs, but that there wouldn't be any major differences in the support for these GPUs.

"Your Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series GPUs will continue to receive: Game support for new releases, Stability and game optimizations, and Security and bug fixes," AMD said.

Using the new split driver approach will reportedly make the job of AMD's driver team easier, whilst preventing anything designed for newer GPUs from breaking anything on the older ones.

"Our goal is simple: to give every Radeon gamer the best experience possible. By separating the code paths, our engineers can move faster with new features for RDNA 3 and RDNA 4, while keeping RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 stable and optimized for current and future games," AMD said.

This public statement backs up the response Tom's Hardware received from AMD at the tail end of last week.

"New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs in the maintenance mode branch," an AMD spokesperson told Tom's Hardware last week.

This probably puts to bed any ideas of those older AMD cards getting the latest upscaling support, despite what modders have already proved is possible. AMD's early cards were notoriously and significantly behind the Nvidia curve when it came to upscaling and ray tracing support. With how much greater focus recent generations of AMD hardware and the latest games have placed on these technologies, perhaps it makes sense for AMD to keep its efforts for these new features focused on the future and recent past.

Either way, it's good to know that game optimizations will remain for those on older cards, even if they won't get quite the same shiny new features as the latest designs.

AMD’s latest Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 driver release has caused quite a stir among users, but the company has now issued important clarifications. While the update moves Radeon RX 5000 (RDNA 1) and RX 6000 (RDNA 2) graphics cards into "maintenance mode", AMD has confirmed that these GPUs, along with discrete and handheld devices based on the same architectures, will continue to receive day-zero game support and essential driver updates. There was also certain confusion around support for Windows 10, as the release notes only mentioned Windows 11. However, it has since been clarified that Windows 10 remains fully supported despite its end of life.

As first spotted by Windows Latest, the release notes for Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 only mention support for Windows 11 version 21H2, with no reference to Windows 10. This initially led to speculation that AMD had dropped official support for Microsoft’s older operating system. However, the company has confirmed in a statement that this isn’t the case.

According to AMD, Windows 10 will still receive full driver support, including the latest Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 release. The absence of Windows 10 in the documentation is due to Microsoft’s operating system reaching its end of support on October 14, 2025. As a result, AMD no longer lists it explicitly in the driver release notes, but the software and drivers remain compatible and supported.

“To clarify, the new driver doesn’t claim Windows 10 support because Windows 10 is in the End of Life stage as per Microsoft,” an AMD spokesperson explained. “The AMD Software: Adrenalin package, although it does not specifically call out Windows 10 support, supports Windows 10. Windows 10 support will continue to be available in AMD Software Adrenalin Edition via the Windows 11 installer.”

AMD’s continued support gives Windows 10 users a bit more breathing room before they decide to make the switch. The clarification definitely comes as great news for PC users who are still stuck on Windows 10, especially those who haven’t yet jumped to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations or personal preference. If you’re still using Windows 10 and want to keep your PC running smoothly, there’s no immediate need to rush the transition, especially if you have an AMD graphics card or integrated GPU solution.

For those who are considering how to upgrade to Windows 11, we’ve covered how to install Windows 11 with a TPM workaround for unsupported PCs, as well as how to get Windows 11 for free or cheap if you’re building or refreshing a system.

Following AMD's decision to put RDNA 1 and 2-based GPUs into "maintenance mode" in order to focus on new features for its more recent graphics technology, the company is backtracking a bit. AMD tells Tom's Hardware that RDNA 1 and 2 won't be left in the dust entirely when it comes to game optimizations. [Edit 11/3/2025: To be clear, AMD gave Tom's Hardware both an on-the-record verbal statement clarifying that day-zero support would be enabled, and also provided the following written statement.]

"New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs in the maintenance mode branch," an AMD spokesperson told Tom's Hardware.

That's a statement that's likely to confuse some customers, as it's unclear what those "market needs" are. This sounds like new features will still be focused on RDNA 3 and 4-based GPUs, but AMD's clarification is that RDNA 1 and 2 will continue to get day-zero support for games, including on handhelds.

This is meant to clarify a statement from yesterday that read: "In order to focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 places Radeon RX 5000 series and RX 6000 series graphics cards (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) in maintenance mode. RDNA 1 and RDNA2 graphics cards will continue to receive driver updates for critical security and bug fixes."

That statement, which would apply to a number of fairly recent graphics cards, as well as the integrated graphics in some laptops (like the Ryzen 7000 and 6000 series) and the Asus ROG Xbox Ally handheld (but not the more expensive Xbox Ally X), caused serious blowback among PC gamers and in the enthusiast press.

The Radeon RX 5700 XT and the Radeon RX 5700, which launched in July 2019, are only six years old, while the Radeon 6000 series, including the 6700XT, is still hanging out on the Steam Hardware Survey as of September 2025. The oldest Radeon 6000 cards are five years old. RDNA 2 can also be found in the Steam Deck, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X.

While AMD has made inroads with enthusiasts on pricing, some have held a belief that Nvidia has better drivers. In this case, Nvidia, which only this year is stopping support for its Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs (including the GTX 1080 Ti), came out looking like a winner because of how long it's been providing updates for its products. Nvidia's cards will continue to see security updates for another three years.

Yesterday, AMD clarified that another piece of news stating that the company would drop USB Type-C functionality on its RX 7900 cards was an error. The company told Tom's Hardware yesterday that "The release notes for AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 posted today included misinformation that has since been corrected. There is no change to USB-C functionality on the RX 7900 series GPUs in the 25.10.2 driver."

We'll only see in time just how much support RDNA 1 and 2 GPUs receive for new games — and if this new position will help quell some of the backlash that's popped up in forums and on social media.

Yesterday, AMD released a new driver update for its GPUs that sent the community into a frenzy because of one major change: it put RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs under "maintenance" mode, removing them from the priority list that receives monthly game optimization updates. This came as a shock to many, considering RDNA 2, or RX 6000 series, is less than 4 years old and was hugely popular against the RTX 3000 series at that time. Without RDNA 2, AMD's position today as the value-oriented alternative to RTX cards wouldn't be as cemented, yet the company is leaving them behind.

Now, as noted by Hardware Unboxed, PC gaming handhelds could suddenly find themselves in a world of trouble. We've reached out to AMD for confirmation that the latest handhelds, which include the newly-released ROG Xbox Ally, are impacted.

Mobile devices rely on proper optimization far more than desktop parts, and even though OEMs like Valve and Asus work with AMD to tune the silicon together, with AMD sunsetting RDNA 2 from its main driver branch, we could see new games start to fall apart on these devices.

Fresh releases rely on GPU driver optimizations to get the most out of the hardware from day one, and without AMD's drivers to back them up, RDNA-2-based handhelds, of which there are plenty, could essentially be rendered legacy hardware. It wouldn't make sense for the company to release specific updates for only its APUs (like the Ryzen Z1) but withhold those optimizations from the main driver releases for desktop and laptop SKUs. As far as we can tell right now, only third-party community support can be of assistance.

Valve is less affected by this fiasco since it uses the open-source RADV Vulkan drivers (for Linux), which the company optimizes itself without caring what AMD does on the Windows side. The real ramifications will be seen in something like the recently launched ROG Xbox Ally, which is powered by the Ryzen Z2A chip based on RDNA 2 architecture. We're talking about a brand new $600 device — nay, an "Xbox" — that might be out of support within a month of its launch. As far as console-like experiences go, that would certainly become one of the worst ones in history.

AMD still supports RDNA 1 and 2, but only for critical bug fixes and security updates, not new features — that luxury is reserved for RX 7000 and 9000 series now. Speaking of, as part of yesterday's update, AMD also disabled charging on the USB-C port on some RX 7900 series cards, a move the company has now confirmed was a mistake. The USB-C feature was not altered and remains operational just like before, with DisplayPort Alt mode and charging capability; not data transfer (which was never supported). In a statement to Tom's Hardware, AMD clarified:

"The release notes for AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 posted today included misinformation that has since been corrected. There is no change to USB-C functionality on the RX 7900 series GPUs in the 25.10.2 driver. There was an incorrect line in the originally posted release notes that has been removed, and the release notes have been updated."

Nvidia still supports its USB-C variant, Virtual Link, to this day, despite no GPUs since the RTX 20 series having the port. In fact, the company supported its Maxwell and Pascal graphics for roughly a decade, with the GTX 10-series being part of the day-one priority list all the way up until September of last year, a whole eight years after it first debuted. Perhaps that's what you can do when you're the richest company in the world. Contrast that to RDNA 1/2, and even with the RX 7000/9000 hierarchy in mind, the decision seems baffling.

AMD has confirmed that its latest driver update involves sunsetting its Radeon RX 5000 Series and 6000 Series graphics cards, placing them in maintenance mode to allow delivery of new tech for its more recent offerings. "In order to focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 places Radeon RX 5000 series and RX 6000 series graphics cards (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) in maintenance mode," the company confirmed to Tom's Hardware in a statement. While the company says that its RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 graphics cards will continue to receive critical security updates and bug fixes, new features, like the latest Battlefield 6 update, are reserved for the Radeon RX 7000 and RX 9000 series in the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2.

It's not even all good news for Radeon RX 7000 series owners. Folks who have a Radeon RX 7900 series card—that's the XT or XTX—that includes a USB Type-C port on the back may be dismayed to know that the new driver disables that port's ability to power external devices. It also disables the port's ability to act as a USB port at all. Instead, it is simply an oddly-shaped DisplayPort connection now.

Why is AMD making these changes? It could certainly be down to the fact that AMD's graphics driver package is now too large to fit on two CD-ROMs. In the era of ubiquitous broadband internet, a 1.6GB driver package is arguably no big deal, but many people around the world still labor under the limitation of metered internet connections with limited transfer allowances. For reference, NVIDIA's graphics driver package is less than 900 megabytes, although some of that is no doubt because NVIDIA includes neither the Control Panel nor its new NVIDIA App in that download. For AMD's part, the company hints at focusing on its more recent product offerings as the recent for the change, as per the above statement.

Beyond those changes, the 25.10.2 driver release brings support for DirectX 12 Work Graphs to the Radeon RX 9000 series. Work Graphs are a little-used feature that essentially allows the GPU to act fully independently of the CPU by dispatching its own work. It's currently supported by Radeon RX 7000, GeForce RTX 30 series, and newer non-Intel GPUs; it's surprising to learn that Work Graphs were not supported on Radeon RX 9000 series parts until now.

Of course, as with any new driver release, AMD has packed in some bug fixes for the new bundle. Crashes in The Last of Us Part II, Remedy's co-op Control follow-up FBC Firebreak, and NBA 2K25's MyCareer mode should be resolved, while stuttering in Baldur's Gate 3, corruption in Serious Sam 4, and VR issues in VTOL VR should be all sewn up. Also, AMD seems to have resolved a problem where running VR headsets at 80 or 90 Hz could cause stuttering. Finally, no less than ten separate security issues have apparently been resolved in this driver.

Remaining known issues include a long-standing bug where Cyberpunk 2077 crashes when trying to play in RT Overdrive mode, intermittent crashes or driver timeouts in Battlefield 6 on certain integrated graphics, similar behavior in Roblox on RX 7000 GPUs, texture flickering in BF6 when using AMD Record and Stream, and missing Radeon Anti-Lag 2 in Counter-Strike 2 on Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs. AMD says to try switching to Vulkan (by adding -vulkan to your Steam launch options) if you must have Anti-Lag 2 support in CS2.

Now, AMD has confirmed the reason for the change. In AMD's defense, Battlefield 6 already runs pretty well on Radeon RX 6000 GPUs, so there's not exactly a pressing need for that update on those cards. Still, it would be awfully early for AMD to be dropping non-security driver update support for RDNA 2.

AMD is quietly working on a new version of Fluid Motion Frames, just a year after AFMF 2 was released. Two Guru3D forum posters discovered developer notes in the upcoming AMD Adrenalin 25.20 driver branch that mention AFMF 3 support. The latest AMD beta driver out today is 25.9.2, so we could see this new driver very soon.

The discovery was made from a "Windows Preview Edition" of the driver that came out on the 24th. The driver is focused on AI and features a plethora of AI-focused updates, including Python 3.12 support and PyTorch on Windows Preview, to improve LLM functionality on supported RX 9000, RX 7000 series GPUs, and Ryzen AI 9/Max APUs in Windows 11.

New code unearthed in Intel's Arc graphics driver files could point to the company's plans to launch its own answer to Nvidia's multi-frame generation tech. Multi-frame generation, or MFG for short, debuted in Nvidia's keynote last year as part of its pitch for the RTX 50 series. Ada Lovelace could already do regular frame gen — inserting an AI-generated frame between two real ones — but Blackwell took it one step further — using up to three interpolated frames created from an actually rendered one. So far, neither Intel nor AMD has an answer to this, though that appears to be changing soon, according to the r/IntelArc subreddit.

Scouring through the latest Arc drivers, user u/Organic-Bird-587 stumbled upon a mention of "Multi-Frame Generation (XeSS)" in the files. That was accompanied by an image that could potentially be the new logo for Intel's MFG, suggesting that the chipmaker might be working on its own multi-frame generation tech set to debut soon. Despite Arc facing fresh scrutiny following the recent Nvidia-Intel deal, the company is still believed to be working on Battlemage — its current-gen discrete GPU architecture — and states it remains committed to its Arc graphics project, which could include its fabled B770 card.

Driver Built XeSS Frame Generation Might be on the way. from r/IntelArc

Pairing up the B770 launch with MFG could be a huge win for Intel, netting them an answer to Nvidia's multi-frame tech. AMD currently offers no MFG solution of its own, so this could be the moment to establish a unique selling point for Arc versus AMD graphics cards. Still, it's important to note that this is purely speculative, and finding trinkets of unreleased or unannounced products is commonplace in driver code — until there's confirmation from Intel, take this with a huge grain of salt, although it would make sense given the current landscape.

Nvidia's historic $5 billion investment into Intel last week seemed to put the company's Arc graphics lineup in jeopardy, especially after the announcement that would see Intel create new chips featuring GPU chiplets from Nvidia. Intel later clarified that Arc will remain in development and that RTX GPUs are "complementary" — a stance that lines up with this news, as MFG is purely Nvidia's play at the moment, so offering a competitor to that almost reinforces hope that Arc is still on the battlefront, fighting to carve out its own space in a crowded market.

Intel announced that it will transition the integrated graphics on 11th- to 14th-generation processors to a legacy software support model, relegating its last-generation chips to the back burner. The company says that it will no longer release new features for these chips and will only provide software support for critical fixes and security vulnerabilities. It also reduces the update release cadence for the iGPUs from monthly to quarterly, and they will also lose Day 0 Game support.

This announcement affects both desktops and laptop chips. The 11th to 14th-generation Intel CPUs are still relatively new — the 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs first arrived in 2023, with new models released just last year, while the 11th-generation Tiger Lake processors launched in 2020. In effect, Intel is saying that your one-year-old Intel Core i5-14400 is already on the back burner.

While an unwelcome move, the company is likely making this change to conserve resources and focus on its newer Arc graphics architecture. After all, Intel has cut 4,000 positions in the U.S. alone so far this year, with thousands of technicians and engineers being let go as the company fights hard for its survival.

Still, many customers might feel betrayed; after all, if you bought a new processor, you expect it to be supported for at least five to seven years. This announcement will not brick your PC, and you still get critical and security updates quarterly. But you’re also not getting new features, and you might have issues with (or possibly not even be able to play) the latest games at launch.

Nevertheless, many users will likely not feel this. After all, gamers who typically download, install, and play a AAA game at launch most often have a discrete GPU installed on their system. In fact, even the most hardware-friendly titles, such as the upcoming Battlefield 6, require a modest graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, or Intel Arc A380.

Even though it makes sense for Intel to focus on its newer Core and Core Ultra chips, the fact that Intel is moving such a relatively new CPU line-up to legacy support could leave a bad taste in the mouths of some users.

AMD’s latest Radeon driver update (Adrenalin Edition 25.9.1) is expanding support for FSR 4 upscaling and frame generation. According to the official patch notes, FSR 4 can now be enabled in most DirectX 12 titles that already support FSR 3.1. With the latest update, FSR 4 is now compatible with 85 games in total, however it is still limited to RDNA 4-based Radeon 9000 series GPUs.

In a separate announcement post, AMD has explained how this works and notes that enabling FSR 4 through its new driver update is a pretty seamless process. Once users update to the latest Adrenalin Edition driver, their Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards should automatically gain access to FSR 4. Additionally, users need to switch to FSR 3.1 in their supported game settings and then toggle FSR 4 within AMD”s Adrenalin Edition software. This enables the driver to override the in-game FSR 3.1 implementation with the newer FSR 4 version.

The company has also made it clear that this works only with DirectX 12 titles that have integrated a signed FSR 3.1 DLL as per AMD’s developer guidelines. Any games running on Vulkan, or those that use non-standard methods such as third-party plug-ins, are not compatible with the FSR 4 driver upgrade.

Despite this update, AMD’s upscaling technology still trails Nvidia’s DLSS in terms of adoption and flexibility. In the meantime, community developers have stepped in with tools like OptiScaler, which can reroute existing upscalers such as DLSS, XeSS, or FSR 2 into FSR 4 with frame generation, effectively widening its reach. Similarly, certain GitHub users pointed out that FSR 3.1 games can be upgraded to FSR 4 by simply replacing the game's FSR 3.1 DLL files manually with DLL files from AMD's latest FSR SDK 2.0, although these unofficial solutions may have limitations.

Just last month, the company accidentally uploaded the full FSR 4 source code to GitHub while updating its FidelityFX SDK, revealing work on an alternate int8-based version of the upscaler. This suggests AMD might be preparing broader GPU support for FSR 4 beyond its current RDNA 4 hardware.

For now, AMD’s official rollout of FSR 4 ensures stability and broader compatibility for supported titles, but the modding community’s efforts suggest a strong demand for wider adoption.

Nvidia's consumer software stack just got a little closer to being streamlined. The Nvidia App has migrated a number of features from the legacy Nvidia Control Panel program to its newest release, Version 11.0.5.245. The list of features moved into Nvidia App includes 3D Settings customization and advanced multi-monitor settings, among others.

When the Nvidia App version 1.0 was released in November of 2024, it signaled a desire from Nvidia to bridge the gap in its consumer-facing software stack. The Nvidia Control Panel, a program that contained all of the granular settings and sliders for customizing Nvidia GPU performance, was paired with the GeForce Experience program, which contained a portal for updating GPU drivers and yet another hub for the PC's games and programs.

Nvidia App aims to unify the two software experiences of GeForce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel. But until recently, it lacked several essential settings necessary for some users. This week's 11.0.5.245 update includes a host of changes to the App that migrate some of the last key features from Control Panel, listed below.

New Settings migrated from classic NVIDIA Control Panel

• 3D Settings: Anisotropic Filtering, Antialiasing, MFAA, PhysX, Texture Filtering, and Background Application Max Frame Rate.
• Multi-Monitor Support: Surround functionality for comprehensive multi-monitor gaming and productivity environments.
• Usability Features: Offline mode is now supported for the System Control Panel and Driver Settings, ensuring access without an active internet connection.
• Notebook Enhancements: Advanced Optimus now shows which apps are blocking its use. Additionally, you can toggle notifications for tray icon and desktop notifications.

Intel’s Arc graphics driver version 32.0.101.6987 introduces a first for the company’s integrated GPUs: manual control over system memory allocation for graphics workloads. "Intel Graphics Software now supports Shared GPU Memory Override control for Built-in Intel Arc GPUs in select Intel Core Ultra Processors (series 1 and 2) in Windows 10 and Windows 11 host systems," the release notes state.

Intel's integrated GPUs use system memory to store working data, rather than a separate GDDR memory pool for graphics and video applications like a discrete GPU does. The maximum amount of memory your computer can use is generally limited to one-half of the system memory, but Intel's new tool lets users override this.

By default, Shared GPU Memory Override is set to 57%. The maximum system RAM you can set to be used as VRAM will depend on how much total system RAM you have; the more overall RAM, the higher the percentage. Intel's example image shows the share could be as high as 87%, and possibly more if you have enough RAM to spare.

To take advantage, all users have to do is move the slider in Intel Graphics Software and reboot their system. According to Intel's Knowledge Base Page, users will need at least 10GB of system RAM and an Intel Core Ultra Processor Series 2 or later (contradicting the release notes, which also denote Series 1).

This kind of control has been more common on AMD platforms, where BIOS-level settings can change VRAM allocation (often capped around 8 GB).

The driver also delivers targeted optimizations. Intel cites up to a six percent performance uplift in the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, Mafia: The Old Country, and Doom: The Dark Ages at 1080p with path tracing enabled on Arc B-series GPUs. Stability improvements include resolving Naraka Bladepoint freezes when Intel XeSS is enabled on Battlemage hardware, alongside power management tuning for Arrow Lake-H laptops. Other changes, like a roughly five percent bump in floating-point throughput and marginally faster Windows 11 UI animations, further round out the update.

While the Shared GPU Memory Override gives enthusiasts more control, over-allocation comes with technical trade-offs. Integrated GPUs use system RAM as part of a unified memory architecture, so allocating excessive VRAM can starve the CPU of working memory, especially in multitasking or memory-bound workloads. In extreme cases, forcing a large static allocation can lead to higher paging activity, increased latency in CPU-bound tasks, and, in laptops, greater power draw from sustained DRAM activity.

This means the setting is best tuned for specific, predictable workloads — like running a game or GPU-accelerated application with known VRAM demands — rather than left maxed out at all times. For instance, if you're experimenting with AI workloads that need lots of memory or want to enable ray tracing inside a demanding title, you could simply allocate more of the shared memory to the GPU for the time being, so that you get smoother performance.

In a press release obtained by Tom's Hardware today, AMD announced the Radeon RX 9060, a new entry-level GPU that is said to be optimized for 1080p gaming. Notably, the new graphics card will not be available for purchase through retail channels, but will only be available with PCs offered by "select system integrators."

AMD hasn’t shared the full specifications of the RX 9060 yet, but it will be based on the same RDNA 4 architecture shared by the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9060 XT. This GPU has 28 RDNA 4 compute units, down from 32 on the RX 9060 XT.

Assuming clocks similar to those of the RX 9060 XT, the RX 9060 could deliver up to 22.43 TFLOPS of shader power, down about 12.5% from the RX 9060 XT. It will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory running at as-yet-undisclosed speeds and will offer support for FSR 4 upscaling.

AMD's decision to make the RX 9060 available only through system integrators (i.e., in prebuilt systems) seems like an unfortunate one. Even with only 8GB of VRAM, this product could have been an appealing upgrade for system builders on tight budgets.

RX 9060 XT 8GB cards are currently available for about $250 to $300, depending on the retailer, and an even cheaper RDNA 4 card could have been compelling. Without an official MSRP, however, we have only a limited idea of how the RX 9060 would have been positioned in the Radeon RX 9000-series product family.

AMD also plans to release a new Adrenalin driver update for its range of GPUs that expands support for a handful of newly released games. Driver version 25.8.1 will soon be available for download and offers optimized gameplay in Mafia: The Old Country, Mecha Break, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and the newly updated Unreal Engine 5 release of Valorant. The latest release is also said to offer support for the upcoming Battlefield 6 open beta, which is expected to roll out later this week.

While AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) is officially supported by a limited number of games, the latest update also expands support for the upscaling tech to more titles. These include Cyberpunk 2077, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Mafia: The Old Country, Arena Breakout: Infinite, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, Wreckfest 2, and Lies of P.

The limited availability of FSR 4 stands in stark contrast to Nvidia’s latest DLSS 4 upscaling, which is currently supported in over 125 games and applications. While AMD is clearly working on expanding FSR 4 support, the technology is restricted to the company's latest Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, which further limits its reach. Still, it's good to see the technology come to more titles.

An unverified BIOS for the Asus ROG Astral 5090D has been leaked online, showing a board power limit of 2,001 watts —almost three and a half times higher than the standard 575-watt power limit on the vanilla RTX 5090. As spotted by UNIKO's Hardware, this is an unverified BIOS file, warning its users to “exercise caution when flashing it to your graphics card, and always have a backup.” Aside from that, you probably need custom power delivery that can handle that amount of power, as even the standard connectors that come with the RTX 5090 are prone to melting while running at the standard power level.

Pumping this amount of power into your GPU will likely overwhelm its stock cooling solution, so you likely need a custom water (or liquid nitrogen) loop to ensure that your GPU doesn't cook itself. Of course, you also need a power supply that can deliver that amount of juice. Additionally, since this is an unverified BIOS, you can expect your GPU’s warranty to be automatically voided the moment you install it.

This isn’t the first time that we’re seeing a kilowatt-level GPU, as Galax launched a dual 16-pin RTX 5090D extreme overclocking in China that can handle up to 2,000 watts. It has eventually landed on eBay for an eye-watering $5,500, allowing anyone with the cash to build an over-the-top gaming PC. This unverified BIOS will make it easier for anyone to try breaking records, though, because Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 GPUs are available globally (versus the China-only Galax HOF OC Lab XOC RTX 5090D). Although this leaked BIOS is designed for the RTX 5090D, VideoCardz notes that it is likely compatible with all Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 GPUs.

The 2,000-watt BIOS isn’t designed for the average gamer or even the seasoned professional. Instead, it’s more likely built for those who are looking to break overclocking records. So, if you have an Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 and you’re a little bit mad, you can go ahead and try breaking records with this BIOS at home (but seriously, don’t do it unless you’re a pro overclocker).

Nvidia announced Smooth Motion back in January, as part of its initial RTX 50-series launch. Now the feature seems to have begun to trickle down to RTX 40-series graphics card owners, via a little Nvidia Profile Inspector tweak discovered by Macer, over at the Guru3D forums.

Much like AMD's Fluid Motion Frames, Nvidia's Smooth Motion claims to double your frame rate by putting one AI-generated frame in between two real ones. This is a driver-level solution so it works in any game, regardless of it being supported or not in any particular software. Upscaling technologies like DLSS or FSR can only shine when they're implemented in the graphics pipeline of the game by the developers, but no such effort is required here.

That's why this is such a prominent feature that can help players get more out of their games. However, Smooth Motion was limited to 50-series cards, a space where it's likely not needed as much. Thankfully, a new driver update has just revealed that it is making its way down to the RTX 40 GPUs, at last.

The GeForce 590.26 Preview Driver finally allows users to enable Smooth Motion on their RTX 40-series GPU. As the name suggests, this "preview" is not a stable, public release, but rather a sort of beta intended for developers or enthusiasts to test out the upcoming driver ahead of time. As such, Macer installed it on their computer running an RTX 4090, and through Nvidia Profile Inspector, were able to toggle Smooth Motion. Please note that it didn't appear in the Nvidia app UI directly.

Immediately, the user was able to double their frames in World of Warcraft from 82 to 164 FPS—all without incurring any additional latency—as noted in the performance overlay in the top corner. WoW doesn't natively support DLSS, so this was a long-overdue update, and others have reported similar gains across a multitude of different games as well.

It looks like the writing is on the wall for the Nvidia Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPU architectures. According to an official Nvidia Unix graphics feature deprecation schedule, driver branch 580 will be the last to include support for these architectures (h/t Longhorn on X). For consumers, that means the 580 drivers will be the last to deliver updates that address the GeForce GTX 900 and legendary GTX 1000 series of graphics cards. As Nvidia maintains a unified driver codebase, it looks pretty certain that this Unix schedule will also apply to Windows drivers.

The key statement of intent from the updated schedule is as follows: “The release 580 series will be the last to support GPUs based on the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures.” Though it looks pretty certain to apply to Windows, too, we have reached out to Nvidia to remove any doubt regarding the support for GTX 900 and GTX 1000 cards on Windows. The company wasn't immediately available for comment.

GTX consigned to history, almost

Earlier in the week, we reported on an Nvidia driver change which opened up crazy new possibilities for PC DIYers. However, the dreams of Intel Core 2 system makers enjoying outlandish high jinks with Nvidia RTX50 GPUs have now partially evaporated. Twitter(X)-based tech enthusiast Bob Pony, who first surfaced the driver change, is back, but his tales of “struggles,” aren’t exactly the news we wanted to hear.

To recap, the latest Nvidia GeForce driver re-enabled support for Intel processors dating back to the Core 2 era, as it no longer required CPU support for the POPCNT instruction. That is all well and good, and Pony took to Twitter yesterday to “happily confirm that it's possible to use an NVIDIA RTX 50 series graphics card in an old system such as an Intel Core 2 Quad.” Specifically, they partnered their old Core 2 Quad Q9450 with an unashamedly modern RTX 5060 Ti. “It works!” Pony celebrated, and tipped followers to avoid trying the same with an RTX 5060 non-Ti due to its PCIe x8 interface.

What happened next is that Pony quickly went from fiddling around in Windows 11 to trying to get some modern games running on their May-to-September combo.

Nvidia's newest drivers no longer require the system CPU to support the POPCNT instruction. We don't know why this change has been made, however, there are some fascinating implications regarding what you might call mismatched hardware. For example, tech enthusiast Bob Pony observed that due to this driver change, "you could possibly pair an [Nvidia GeForce] RTX 5090 with [an Intel] Core 2 Duo." We'd like to see it, and surely we will see this exact scenario tested by a TechTuber, shortly.

In Pony's screenshot (unfurl the post embedded above) you can see what appears to be an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 processor powered system running a version of Windows 11 Pro. That alone might need some system hacking shenanigans. However, Pony asserts that the latest Nvidia driver, version 576.40 which was released just yesterday, now plays nicely with systems packing old Core 2 Duo CPUs (introduced 2006) which lack POPCNT support.

The tech enthusiast included a post later in the thread to show that Nvidia didn't support system CPUs lacking the POPCNT instruction when he checked last August. In fact, unfortunate users trying such an installation might face a 'soft brick' and have to wait through a number of boot loops before being able to recover Windows startup.

So, what is POPCNT?

POPCNT is a CPU instruction and a short form derived from Population Count. Processors use it to determine how many bits are actively set in a given binary number. Notably, it is part of the SSE4.2 instruction set. Given that you have to go back more than a decade and a half to find processors without native POPCNT support, it doesn't really concern anyone who wants a practical workmanlike PC for typical 2025 workloads.

Windows 11 24H2's POPCNT requirement

Intel just released a graphics driver update that reportedly improves FPS performance by around 10% for Intel Core 200V (Lunar Lake) chips. According to Intel Gaming Access, Intel graphics driver 32.0.101.6734 optimizes the CPU’s power management, which allows the integrated Intel Arc 140V and 130V GPUs to deliver better performance while remaining at their default power setting of 17 watts.

The company tested the update on the MSI Claw 8 AI+ with nine different titles, and the results were promising. More than just the 10% uplift in FPS, the new driver also increased the 1% lows by 25%, making for much smoother gameplay. Intel said that it set the games at 1080p Medium quality during the tests, while the handheld console was at its default 17W TDP. These are the results that the chip maker published for each game:

In a surprising turn of events, an Nvidia engineer pushed a fix to the Linux kernel, resolving a performance regression seen on AMD integrated and dedicated GPU hardware (via Phoronix). Turns out, the same engineer inadvertently introduced the problem in the first place with a set of changes to the kernel last week, attempting to increase the PCI BAR space to more than 10TiB. This ended up incorrectly flagging the GPU as limited and hampering performance, but thankfully it was quickly picked up and fixed.

In the open-source paradigm, it's an unwritten rule to fix what you break. The Linux kernel is open-source and accepts contributions from everyone, which are then reviewed. Responsible contributors are expected to help fix issues that arise from their changes. So, despite their rivalry in the GPU market, FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is an avenue that bridges the chasm between AMD and Nvidia.

The regression was caused by a commit that was intended to increase the PCI BAR space beyond 10TiB, likely for systems with large memory spaces. This indirectly reduced a factor called KASLR entropy on consumer x86 devices, which determines the randomness of where the kernel's data is loaded into memory on each boot for security purposes. At the same time, this also artificially inflated the range of the kernel's accessible memory (direct_map_physmem_end), typically to 64TiB.

In Linux, memory is divided into different zones, one of which is the zone device that can be associated with a GPU. The problem here is that when the kernel would initialize zone device memory for Radeon GPUs, an associated variable (max_pfn) that represents the total addressable RAM by the kernel would artificially increase to 64TiB.

Since the GPU likely cannot access the entire 64TiB range, it would flag dma_addressing_limited() as True. This variable essentially restricts the GPU to use the DMA32 zone, which offers only 4GB of memory and explains the performance regressions.

The good news is that this fix should be implemented as soon as the pull request lands, right before the Linux 6.15-rc1 merge window closes today. With a general six to eight week cadence before new Linux kernels, we can expect the stable 6.15 release to be available around late May or early June.

Nvidia RTX 40-series GPU owners continue to face system stability issues, with reports of blue screen crashes (BSODs), system instability, and game-breaking bugs. While many users have been frustrated by these problems, Nvidia’s apparent primary focus on its new RTX 50-series cards has only added to their concerns. Now, a new issue has surfaced (via Overclock3D) that may be directly linked, where PC game developers are actively warning users against installing the latest 572.xx GeForce drivers, due to performance and stability issues.

Players using RTX 40 and even some RTX 30-series GPUs have reported problems after updating to the 572.xx driver. Newly released games, including inZOI and The First Berserker: Khazan, have been particularly affected, with players experiencing stuttering or frame drops. Developers of these games have gone as far as recommending users roll back to the older 566.36 driver, released in December 2024, to restore stability. The problem has been widely discussed across Reddit and various forums, with many pointing fingers at the latest Nvidia driver branch as the common denominator.

The overlap between these driver-related issues and the broader RTX 40-series instability raises the question whether Nvidia’s latest driver updates may be contributing to the problems. Reports of random system crashes, unexpected BSODs, and freezing have been piling up in recent months, leaving many to wonder if Nvidia’s focus on optimizing for upcoming hardware is causing unexpected regressions in stability for its previous-gen GPUs.

Despite mounting complaints, Nvidia has yet to formally acknowledge any major issues with the 572.xx driver when it comes to older GPUs. However, the fact that game developers themselves are warning players to avoid the update suggests that the problem is more than just anecdotal. While some users have attempted troubleshooting steps such as clean driver installations and adjusting in-game settings, the most effective solution appears to be rolling back to an earlier, more stable supported driver version.

Until Nvidia issues a fix, affected users are advised by multiple devs to revert to the 566.36 driver via Nvidia’s official website. With an increasing number of users and developers highlighting these problems, it remains to be seen whether Nvidia will prioritize a swift resolution or continue focusing on ironing out wrinkles with its new RTX 50 lineup. For now, those looking for a more stable gaming experience may be better off sticking with older, proven drivers.

The launch of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs has been marred with several issues, including shortages, overheating power connectors, and driver instability. While the first two issues are harder to sort, the last one should be fixable via downloadable software updates. In fact, the company has already released several Hotfix versions, with the last one — version 572.65 — being released March 2. However, it seems that some issues (very similar) remain, so we just received another Hotfix update from Team Green. The GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 572.75 tackles two specific problems: the first one is some overclocked RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs refuse to run at maximum frequency after a system reboot, while the second one fixes black screen crashes.

Nvidia usually releases driver updates monthly; these Hotfixes are released out of schedule for problems that require priority solutions, like an unstable driver that causes BSODs and black screens across the wider community of RTX users. Note that these Hotfixes aren’t usually automatically installed, so you’ll have to find, download, and install them yourself. The company says, “To be sure, these Hotfix drivers are beta, optional and provided as-is. They are run through a much abbreviated QA process. The sole reason they exist is to get fixes out to you more quickly.” Nevertheless, they will still be included with the next drop of Game Ready drivers in the Nvidia app. Even if you don’t know that there’s an issue with your RTX GPU (or are not affected), you’ll still get the fix within the next few weeks.

Hardware drivers are inherently complicated pieces of software, especially as Nvidia must consider the huge number of configurations that its hardware will encounter in the field. Aside from that, it must also work flawlessly with thousands of apps and game titles, which means that it is next to impossible to test every possible permutation of hardware and software before it releases a driver. The company says, “A GeForce driver is an incredibly complex piece of software. We have an army of software engineers constantly adding features and fixing bugs.”

If you’re experiencing a problem with your newly bought RTX 50-series GPU, maybe downloading a Hotfix would be enough to solve it. But since Hotfixes are essentially Beta versions of what’s coming out in the regular driver update, you might run into another bug here and there. If that happens, you should report it to Nvidia’s customer service — that way, it would have a chance of fixing what you’re experiencing before the Hotfix gets a wider release as part of Nvidia’s Game Ready drivers.

Nvidia released GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 572.60 earlier in the week, but one of the most important bug fixes was ineffectual in some cases, according to various tech forum members. Today, Nvidia has sought to plug its GPU black screen issues more tightly with GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 572.65. Fingers crossed it works this time.

There's just one bullet point in the GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 572.65 description. "This hotfix addresses the following issue: PC may boot to a black screen when connected via DisplayPort with certain monitors [5131002]," writes Nvidia. However, a follow-up paragraph outlines the arduous task facing graphics driver developers in 2025. "A GeForce driver is an incredibly complex piece of software," says Nvidia. "We have an army of software engineers constantly adding features and fixing bugs. These changes are checked into the main driver branches, which are eventually run through a massive QA process and released."

So, we have to forgive Nvidia (or, indeed, AMD or Intel) for the odd wrinkle in drivers, be it a game or machine-breaking issue or something less drastic like visual artifacts or so on. The good thing about a Hotfix, though, is that it can be delivered pretty quickly, and those who are actually suffering from the bug in question can apply it. Others can simply wait for the update to be rolled into the mainline WHQL driver release in due course – it might be an important bug fix for them at some later date.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice an important difference in black screen bug fixing emphasis between the recently released GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 572.60 and the newly arrived hotfix. While the former was flagged to fix various black screen issues experienced by RTX 50 Series graphics card owners, the hotfix seems to apply to the broader GeForce ownership.

The wider applicability of this black screen fix, Version 572.65, is welcome if you look at the official Version 572.60 feedback thread on the GeForce forums. Jaunt over to the community, and you will notice that there are owners of a range of cards, including the RTX 3060, RTX 4090, and RTX 5070 Ti, who grouse about Thursday's driver not banishing their black screen problems.

Usually, it is a good idea to hold back from fresh driver updates for a period and monitor forums for other people to discover issues. However, those who have bought one of the new RTX 50 cards and are keen to keep up with the latest software may throw caution to the wind. Also, GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 572.60 was attractive for its support for Naraka: Bladepoint with DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation (MFG), plus Monster Hunter Wilds with DLSS and Frame Generation, as well as support for 29 new G-Sync Compatible monitors.

Nvidia has released the GeForce Game Ready Driver 572.42 WHQL. The new software delivers day-one support for Avowed (Feb 18), Sid Meier's Civilization VII, an Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation (MFG) update, and the Wuthering Waves DLSS Frame Generation (FG) update. It also claims to fix some gaming bugs and irons out annoying wrinkles.

For lucky GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 owners, this is the first WHQL update since the launch driver, building on a Hotfix released on February 11. However, we have confirmation that the RTX 5070 Ti will be available from February 20, so relaxed Nvidians might want to wait a week. Another new driver will inevitably land on that day—unless the games mentioned above are in their libraries.

The first game-ready driver supporting the new RTX 5090(D) and RTX 5080 graphics cards came out at the end of January (572.16 - WHQL). It was an important release as it debuted DLSS 4 technology for titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Outlaws, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Feb 11's Hotfix stopped Valorant crashing on startup, which afflicted those with shiny new Blackwell GPUs and patched up a bug that caused Final Fantasy XVI to freeze on exit.

Today, we welcome the 572.42 WHQL driver and it WHQL-izes what the hotfix offered, and adds a game fix for Delta Force players. Some team-based shooter players were getting slower performance when Resizable BAR was enabled, which was an obvious error.

Another fix in the newest driver affects the 3DMark DXR Feature Test. It is peculiar, as the release notes say user tests resulted in an "Unusually low score for Blackwell GPUs." If that fixes everything, then the software developer time spent here hardly seems worthwhile.

The new 572.42 WHQL driver could also be a welcome download for the owners of several new monitors added to the G-Sync Compatible tier. Four AOC and one new Philips model can now benefit from a baseline Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) experience on supported Nvidia GPUs.

Looking at the big picture, the launch of the Blackwell architecture GPUs hasn't been smooth sailing for anyone involved. Thanks to our old friends (under)supply and demand, we've had availability and pricing issues. Now, a frightening number of users seem to be experiencing the second great wave of melting power connectors. While we wait for the worrying hardware and perhaps some firmware issues to be fixed on the newest GeForce family, the game optimizations and bug fixes in software offer little consolation.

Intel has posted a celebratory video to its Twitter page highlighting that its XeSS upscaling is now supported in over 150 games. Previously in June, this number (not counting demos and benchmarking software) was just 105, so the number of supported games increased by 50% over six months or so — marking an impressive rate of growth for the XeSS upscaler that was originally launched in 2022. As upscaling becomes the de facto way to play games at higher resolutions and framerates (particularly on low-end and mid-range systems, though now somewhat infamously being emphasized even on top-end hardware like the RTX 50 Series), it's good to see that Intel is staying competitive with its implementation and that major releases are including it right alongside AMD's FSR and Nvidia's DLSS.

So, what games support Intel XeSS? The majority of games that added support in the past half-year were new releases, so that's a good place to start. Titles like the stylish-action-influenced Final Fantasy XVI, Soulsborne-influenced Black Myth: Wukong, and PlayStation ports Spider-Man 2 and God of War: Ragnarok have all launched with Intel XeSS 1.0 support.

Several older games, but especially multiplayer titles, either also launched with Intel XeSS 1.0 support or were retrofitted with XeSS support after the fact. This includes multiplayer staples like Fortnite, Call of Duty Modern Warfare II (and III), Tekken 8, and The Finals. Single-player games with retrofitted XeSS support include Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, and even Death Stranding: Director's Cut.

Unfortunately, current support for Intel XeSS 2.0 is quite lacking, which is a shame since XeSS 2.0 supports AI-powered Frame Generation without needing to use non-accelerated AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation in tandem, unlike 1.0. Only Marvel Rivals and F1 2024 currently support XeSS 2.0, but upcoming titles like Assassin's Creed Shadows and Civilization VII will launch with the feature intact — at least, with the visually-improved XeSS 2.0 Super Resolution if not the whole suite with Frame Gen.

Fortunately for Intel users in need of upscaling and playing games without native support for Intel XeSS, AMD was kind enough to make most versions of its FSR upscaler easily cross-compatible with various GPU architectures. Notably at the time of DLSS and RTX 20 Series' launch, this even provided easy resolution scaling performance gains for past-gen Nvidia users, which earned AMD lots of favor at the time.

But of course, the best experience for Intel GPU users will be native support for Intel XeSS — particularly since even XeSS 1.0 looked markedly better than FSR 1.0 and some would argue even FSR 2.0. XeSS 1.0 or Super Resolution-only users hurting for Frame Generation may also want to consider the GPU-agnostic Lossless Scaling software for Frame Gen insertion.