Buying a new graphics card? Nvidia has a new GPU driver available as well

What a busy day this is shaping up to be for Nvidia. In addition to stocking its webstore with GeForce GTX 10 series cards at MSRP and helping its retail partners do the same with custom cooled cards, Nvidia has started pushing out a new 'Game Ready' 397.64 GPU driver.

The new driver brings official support for Microsoft's April 2018 Update for Windows 10. It's also optimized for a handful of games, including Destiny 2: Warmind, Conan Exiles, and Pillars of Eternity 2: Dreadfire.

Whether you want to install it right away or wait for others to test it out is another matter. Nvidia's previous driver release ended up causing issues for some GeForce GTX 1060 owners (and possibly owners of other graphics cards as well), putting affected users into an installation loop. In other cases, the driver would get removed if it sat idle for an extended period of time.

Nvidia later released a hotfix to address the issue. It's also been fixed in this latest release, along with a few other bugs. Here's a look at the full list:

[Grand Theft Auto V][NvidiaControl Panel]: God rays become less intense after forcing MSAA using the Nvidia Control Panel.
[Starcraft 2][Kepler GPUs]: Black screen appears when exiting the game.
[SLI][GeForce GTX 780 Ti]: There is no display output when connecting the DisplayPort and two DVI monitors.
[Netflix]: Netflix playback may stutter intermittently.
[GeForce GTX 1060]: Windows Device Manager may report Code 43 error.
Event Error 14 appears in the Windows Event Viewer when booting into Windows.
GDI objects increase every time an application queries NVAPI.
[Windows 10]: Driver may get removed after the PC has been left idle for an extended period of time.

There are still several known issues that Nvidia is working to fix in a future driver update. One of them causes green flickering in Far Cry 5 when enabling HDR while running at a non-native resolution. The workaround is to either quick and restart the game at the desired resolution, or Alt-Tab out and back into the game. You can also hit Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode and then back to full-screen mode.

Check out the release notes (PDF) for a full list of changes and open issues. You can grab the latest driver through GeForce Experience or by going here and downloading it manually.

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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).