NVIDIA Releases GeForce 451.48 WHQL Driver With DirectX 12 Ultimate Support For All Gamers – Adds GPU Scheduling Feature on Windows 10

NVIDIA has officially released its first DirectX 12 Ultimate Game Ready driver for all GeForce PC gamers. The driver is released two months after the initial outing for the developer community, bringing with it a range of new features, increased performance and several bug fixes.

The latest GeForce Game Ready Driver 451.48 WHQL can be downloaded from NVIDIA's official GeForce webpage. The driver is one of the most important software module for NVIDIA's gaming graphics cards moving forward as it not only brings better support for existing features but adds upon various next-generation technologies that will be implemented in next-generation AAA titles in the coming months and years.

You can download the driver from the link provided below:

To name a few, the GeForce Game Ready driver adds support for:

DirectX 12 Ultimate API

Vulkan 1.2 API

Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling

CUDA 11.0

We have already seen some great performance improvements with the use of Mesh Shaders by an Xbox Developer who tested them on an Xbox Series X console & a PC powered with a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. Ray Tracing is definitely one of the key highlights for DirectX 12 Ultimate and also Vulkan API. In addition to Mesh Shaders, DirectX 12 Ultimate also adds support for DXR Tier 1.1, Sampler Feedback, VRS (Variable Rate Shading) and more.

One of the main highlights of today's update is the addition of hardware-accelerated scheduling feature for GPUs in Windows 10. According to Microsoft themselves, the GPU scheduling feature allows a graphics card to directly manage its video memory, which in turn significantly improves performance of the minimum and average FPS and thereby, reducing latency. It works regardless of the API used for games and applications such as DirectX, Vulkan and OpenGL.

Looking at the current GPU landscape, NVIDIA wasn't only the first to offer DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.2 API support to developers but also is the first to offer the same tier of support through drivers to its gaming segment. The competition on the other hand has yet to offer support for DX12 Ultimate and its respective features to its gaming segment.

Moving on, the driver also adds a range of new G-Sync compatible displays. A total of nine G-Sync Compatible monitors from AOC, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, LG and Samsung, the list of which you can see below:

The drivers are supported by all graphics cards dating back to the Kepler GeForce 600 series. Lastly, you can see the change log for all the fixes and known issues within the latest drivers:

[Just Cause 2]: The game does not detect CUDA files which results in missing “GPU Water Simulation” and “Bokeh Filter” settings. [2994570]

[Sea of Thieves]: Issues with game rendering occur. [200614095]

[Resident Evil 2 Remake]: The game may display random object and menu flickering. [2997880]  [Devil May Cry 5]: The game may display random object flickering. [2997814]

[Divinity Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition]: The game experiences low performance when hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is enabled. [3009631]

[Notebook]: Windows Mixed Reality headsets may display jitter when connected to the HDMI port linked to the NVIDIA Optimus notebook integrated graphics. [2971312]

[G-SYNC]: G-SYNC does not work with DirectX 9 games if “Disable full screen optimizations” is selected. [2969897]

Display brightness increases while enabling GPU scaling. [200612966]

NVIDIA HD Audio may disappear after display goes to sleep. [2807732]

The cursor turns into a grey rectangle when playing YouTube 4K HDR videos. [3009602]

[Sunset Overdrive]: The game may display random green corruption if Depth of Field is enabled from in-game settings. [2750770]  [VR}: HDCP errors occur with Valve Index VR. [2967616]

[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare]: Color banding can occur in the game after enabling Image Sharpening from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [2889337/3028436]

[Call of Duty – Warzone]: Freestyle does not work. (200593020)

[Forza Motorsport 7]: The curb may display a black strip during a race on certain tracks. [2781776]

[Zombie Army: Dead War 4][Ansel/Freestyle]: The Ansel & Freestyle tabs are undetectable. [2810884]

[Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege][Vulkan][G-SYNC]: When playing the game in Vulkan mode with G-SYNC enabled, flickering occurs after switching the game between full-screen and windowed mode.[200578641] To work around, either disable G-SYNC or play using an API other than Vulkan.

[SLI][G-SYNC]: With multi-GPU and G-SYNC enabled, TDRs occur soon after launching an application. [200628981]

[Notebook][The Witcher 3 WILD HUNT]: The game remains minimized when DDS switch is set to Optimus and Automatic, and cannot be restored to full screen. [200628973]

[Notebook][H-Clone]: With the integrated graphics processor as the clone source, display settings cannot be changed from the NVIDIA Control Panel. [200594188]

[Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly drop to 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452

[Notebook][G-SYNC]: Graphical corruption occurs when windowed G-SYNC+V-Sync is On while running applications in Clone/Duplicate mode. [200628911]

[Notebook]: LVDS-display goes blank upon rebooting the system after driver installation on some systems. [200627952]