NVIDIA Releases 361.43 WHQL Game Ready Driver
by Daniel Williams on December 22, 2015 8:00 AM EST
The holiday season is fast approaching a climax, and this season the stream of driver updates isn’t ready to quit. With that NVIDIA has brought us a stocking loaded with bugfixes and even a couple new features to show the world.
There are quite a few resolved issues this time around. The first of note is an issue with hot unplugging a display from an output, which caused any display hot plugged in afterward to be ignored. There were also issues with players of Star Wars Battlefront running SLI enabled systems experiencing lag after updating the driver to 359.06. Lastly was an issue covered over at PC Perspective a couple of months ago. Where Maxwell based cards (GM20x) were found guilty of rising from idle clock speeds to keep up with the output bandwidth required for refresh rates above 120Hz, which led to more power draw and more noise from the system.
This driver update is also the first release under the R361 branch. As a major version change this update carries a larger number of changes than the usual updates we see. Along with the resolved issues from earlier we also have some notable feature changes to the drivers this time around. First on the list is added WDDM 2.0 support for Fermi based GPU’s. Unfortunately, WDDM 2.0 is only enabled for single GPU setups. SLI users will have to wait a little longer. This is also a good time to note that DX12 support for Fermi is not yet enabled, through will come in a future update (more on this later today).
With Fermi out of the way professional users may be intrigued to hear that through GameWorks VR 1.1 NVIDIA has enabled VR SLI support for OpenGL. Which during NVIDIA’s internal testing led to a claimed 1.7x scaling from one GPU to two. While obviously a case of diminishing returns, that is still a large enough gap in performance to allow much more complexity in one’s workflow or make a job with unbearable performance jump to a much more pleasant framerate.
Anyone interested can download the updated drivers through GeForce Experience or on the NVIDIA driver download page.
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Daniel Egger - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
So many words so little content...> As a major version change this update carries a larger number of changes than the usual updates we see.
And what would those be?
Unfortunately it had to become usual for me to read the Release Notes of a new driver before updating. Even more unfortunately those Release Notes are pretty much useless because they only mention "support game foo" and carry forth the unchanged list of "known issues" from release to release. Despite not mentioning any real change they manage to break und fix many things with every release.
At the moment all important things work for me (again!) with the previous version (including DSR when the output is routed over an Onkyo receiver) so I'll play happy camper and will stay with that version until the next Windows version breaks it again...
chlamchowder - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
I think the article does a pretty decent job of describing the changes. Condensed:-Fix >120 Hz power draw issue
-SLI support for Star Wars Battlefront
-Fix issue where unplugging a display prevents newly plugged displays from being recognized
-WDDM 2.0 support for Fermi
-VR SLI support with OpenGL
Is that easier to read?
MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
No, it lacks detail... ;)darkfalz - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
Glad they fixed the 144 Hz high GPU clock issue, so I can finally run desktop etc. at 144 Hz. Not appearing on Geforce.com at the moment though so maybe it's been pulled. DSR in Optimus Notebooks now please, and proper 3DTV DSR support (ie. DSR on the 720p60 mode!)madwolfa - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
They definitely do appear on nvidia.com driver page.Perfectxps - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link
DSR for Optimus laptops as of 13 December 15 response from Nvidia:Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
Please be aware that this incident will be automatically closed if we do not hear back from you within 72 hours. But if you still need help, simply reply to this email at any time and your incident will be re-opened and you will be assisted further.
Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
Perfectxps - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link
Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer Care.This is Vaseem assisting you with the query that you have.
From the email, I understand that you would like to know if the DSR support has been added to the Optimus laptop.
I will be more than happy to help on this query.
Unfortunately no, the DSR option on Optimus laptop isn't added yet.
Its still under development and unfortunately no update as to when it will be added. Sorry about that.
Please let me know if you have any questions, I will be glad to help you.
Regards,
darkfalz - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link
The 144hz high GPU bug is not fixed. It returns after you run a game or come out of standby. Sigh.. get your act together guys.toyotabedzrock - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
What if your Fermi card is in a laptop that switched between itself and the integrated into graphics? Will wddm 2 work?blzd - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
If it supports Optimus then you can install any standard mobile drivers and it should continue to switch to the IGP as needed.Without Optimus you're in the same boat as most laptops, only (probably year old) graphics drivers provided by the laptop manufacturer will allow you to keep the switching functionality