Nvidia releases 'Game Ready' GPU drivers for BattleTech and Frostpunk

There's a new GeForce driver release available, version 397.31, which delivers optimized graphics support for BattleTech and Frostpunk. Both of those games landed on PC yesterday, and we have reviews up for each one (BattleTech here and Frostpunk here).

Beyond the game optimizations, the release notes (PDF) also mention developer support for Nvidia's RTX ray tracing technology for DirectX 12. Unfortunately this doesn't mean you can enable ray tracing in games, but it does allow developers to start messing around with DirectX ray tracing applications accelerated by RTX, provided they're running a Volta GPU. It also requires Windows 10 Redstone 4, otherwise known (unofficially) as the Spring Creators Update or April Update, which is only available to Windows Insiders at the moment.

Beyond those bits, there are a handful of fixed issues to note. They include:

  • [GeForce GTX 1080 Ti][Doom]: The game crashes due to the driver reverting to OpenGL 1.1 when HDR is enabled.
  • [GeForce GTX 1060][Far Cry 5]: The game crashes after a few minutes of game play.
  • NvfbcPluginWindow temporarily prevents Windows from shutting down after launching a Steam game.
  • [Firefox]: Driver TDR error may occur when using Firefox.
  • [GeForce GTX 1060][Rise of Tomb Raider]: Flickering/corruption occurs when opening the in-game options UI.
  • [NVIDIA Control Panel][SLI][Diablo III]: With V-Sync on and SLI enabled, the game freezes after switching windows (ALT+TAB) a few times. 

You can install the new driver through GeForce Experience, or download and install it manually here.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).