Nvidia's latest GPU driver is primed for MechWarrior 5 and Detroit: Become Human

Best mech games — two battlemechs march towards combat in MechWarrior 5 — (Image credit: Piranha Games)

If you've been waiting for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries to arrive, today's the day you can finally suit up and dole out some oversized destruction, like the good old days. Before you do, however, Nvidia has a new driver release that could help things along.

That's assuming you own a GeForce graphics card, of course. You also have to be willing to pounce on a new driver release before it's had time to aerate in the wild, to see if there are any problems. I haven't heard of any yet with Nvidia's new 441.66 WHQL driver package, though it's early. That said, this is considered a "Game Ready" driver release for MechWarrior 5.

"Game Ready drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1," Nvidia explains.

Jarred is busy testing the new driver and benchmarking MechWarrior 5, and should have some numbers to share soon. So far, performance appears largely unchanged relative to 441.20.

In addition to MechWarrior 5, the 441.66 release is also optimized for Detroit: Become Human (launches December 12). Nvidia added a couple of new G-Sync Compatible displays to the mix with this release as well. They include MSI's Mag251RX and ViewSonic's XG270. There are now over 60 G-Sync Compatible displays in all (you can see the full list here).

[Resolve]: The application may crash during timeline playback when using Blackmagic RAW CODEC media.
[Forza Motorsport 7]: Game starts to stutter after racing a few laps.
[Fallout 76][G-Sync]: The game framerate drops with G-Sync enabled.
[GeForce GTX 1080 Ti]: There is no 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound option in the Windows Sound Properties.
[GeForce GTX 1060 6GB][Nvidia Control Panel]:The Nvidia Control Panel reports an incorrect GPU framebuffer size.

There are a few open issues to be aware of. In Windows 7, World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth (DirectX 12) is prone to crash when switching from DX11 to DX12. And in Windows 10, there are two known issues:

[Sniper Elite 4][Shadow of the Tomb Raider]: Frame rate is not capped at the display refresh rate with V-Sync enabled in DX 12 mode.
[Grand Theft Auto V]: The game frequently crashes

Nvidia says it's working with Rockstar Games to fix the crashing issue in GTA V, though there's no mention of when it might be resolve.

Follow this link to download the latest GeForce driver. Also be sure to check out our guide on how to update drivers for tips on best practices.

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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).