GeForce graphics cards drivers are having their most torrid time since, um, last year. As reported last week, Nvidia’s Game Ready 595.59 update – the launch driver for Resident Evil Requiem – spun up reported cooling fan issues, and its replacement, version 595.71, has been accidentally kneecapping clock speeds and voltage caps on the newest RTX 50 models. Cue yet another new driver, 595.76, which released yesterday as a hasty hotfix.
Nvidia’s patch notes claim 595.76 addresses the unintended voltage capping, which could hurt performance when overclocking, specifically. It also throws in a fix for spooky white dots appearing in Resi Requiem, as well as a promise of improved path tracing performance in Capcom’s rather good horror sequel.
Credit where it’s due, I’ve just tested out the latter and compared to the 591.86 driver, which I used for previous benchmarking, there is indeed a little framerate uptick. On an RTX 5080, a path-traced Requiem ran about 6% faster with Quality DLSS upscaling and 7% faster with DLSS on Performance. I still reckon you should stick with regular ray tracing, though.
Personally, I’m also inclined to hang onto 591.86 a while longer. ‘Tis better to bork and fix quickly than to never fix at all, as I believe it says in the Bible, but multiple unstable drivers in a row is a very effective confidence killer.
At worst, a reputation for dodgy drivers is the kind of thing that can even drive some PC players to switch graphics cards teams – something Nvidia know themselves, having doubtless picked up some customers fed up with AMD’s past software missteps. Not that many people will be buying a new GPU right now, mind. They’re caught up in the same pricing and stock misery as RAM sticks, SSDs, and Steam Machines as a result of ongoing memory shortages.
