Nvidia and AMD release new GPU drivers for upcoming games

February is a pretty good month for PC gaming. For Honor and Sniper Elite 4 both launched today and Halo Wars 2 is coming early next week. However, game launches also bring along new graphics card drivers, with AMD and Nvidia both dropping new drivers today with support for upcoming games, along with some bug fixes to ongoing issues.

First let's take a look at Nvidia's WHQL driver version 378.66. This is a fairly minor update, adding in various optimisations for Halo Wars 2, For Honor and Sniper Elite 4. It doesn't add any new SLI profiles, but it does fix some various bugs, which you can see below:

• [Surround]: Surround cannot be enabled on the XGPU.
• [G-Sync]: With G-Sync and V-Sync both enabled, there is a long delay when switching a game from full-screen mode to windowed mode.
• [Second Life 64-bit]: World view is tinted blue after disabling Advanced Lighting Model.
• [The Division]: Shadows flicker after enabling PCSS.
• [Kepler GPUs][Battlefield 1]: There is flickering in the game when using TAA.
• [SLI][Surround][GeForce GTX 1080]: The system crashes when launching games in SLI Surround using HDMI 2.0 connections.
• [GeForce GTX 1080][Heroes of Storm]: The game crashes when launched.
• [GeForce 860M][Notebook]: Direct X games crash.
• [Minecraft]: Java SE Binary crashes pointing to nvinitx.dll.
• [GeForce GTX 980 Ti]: The driver is unable to detect multiple TV models.

This driver can be downloaded and installed through the GeForce Experience.

Now let's take a look at the notes for AMD's 17.2.1 ReLive driver update. This update also adds optimisations for Sniper Elite 4 and For Honor, the former of which is an AMD endorsed DirectX 12 title. If you own an RX 480 GPU, then AMD claims that you will be able to achieve 60 frames per second at 1440p with maximum image quality settings while running Sniper Elite 4 in DX12 mode. This update also adds multi-GPU support for Sniper Elite 4 and For Honor.

As for bug fixes, this driver fixes an issue with For Honor crashing when switching to fullscreen mode. Radeon HD 7900 series GPUs should no longer experience shadow corruption in Civilization VI and more. However, there are some known issues, for starters, FreeSync may not work with Sniper Elite 4 and For Honor may have some menu flickering. You can find the full patch notes and download this driver, HERE.

KitGuru Says: There are some pretty solid game launches coming this month, so it's nice to see driver support arriving so quickly. Are any of you planning on picking up Sniper Elite 4, Halo Wars 2 or For Honor this month?

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