Nvidia and AMD Release New Graphics Drivers to Prepare for Doom Eternal

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Nvidia released a new Game Ready Driver today for Doom Eternal. Not to be outdone, AMD released a new graphics driver to improve support for Half-Life: Alyx and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint as well as id Software's latest first-person shooter.

We don't know how much this Game Ready Driver improves performance in Doom Eternal; Nvidia only said that it "delivers day-one optimizations and enhancements." AMD quantified the improvements, however, and said that installing its latest  driver will offer a 5% bump at Ultra Nightmare settings and 1080p on Radeon RX 5700XT.

AMD didn't offer similar quantifications for the latest driver's improved support for Half-Life: Alyx or Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. But the company did say the driver adds support for the following extensions to the Vulkan graphics API:

  • VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage
  • VK_KHR_shader_non_semantic_info
  • VK_EXT_texel_buffer_alignment
  • VK_EXT_pipeline_creation_cache_control

AMD said it also fixed many bugs with this driver; the full list can be found in its release notes. The Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.3.1 is available now via the AMD website as well as the AMD Driver Auto-Detect Tool.

The GeForce Game Ready 442.74 WHQL driver is available via Nvidia's website and the GeForce Experience companion app. More information about the changes in this driver can be found in the full release notes (PDF) on Nvidia's website.

Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.