Nvidia’s latest GeForce Game Ready graphics driver update has arrived, bringing with it a fix for performance regressions caused by Microsoft in an October Windows Update, reintroducing PhysX acceleration for RTX 50-series GPUs and providing a rare second pass on Battlefield 6 performance in time for that game’s upcoming Winter Offensive update.
Version 591.44 includes the usual laundry list of bug fixes and improvements, including ray tracing changes to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, but the Battlefield 6 notes jumped out to me. It’s rare to see Nvidia do a significant pass on a game that is generally performing well, and especially to tie it to new post-launch content that only seems to feature a single new map and mode. It’s possible that the Winter Offensive update also includes new graphical elements that would necessitate specific driver changes on Nvidia’s end, though something like that hasn’t been hinted at in recent BF6 updates ahead of the new content’s arrival on December 9th.
I also didn’t expect to see a fix for the PhysX performance issues that RTX 50-series cards launched with, as Nvidia left out hardware to accelerate 32-bit PhysX on these current generation GPUs. Previously, enabling PhysX effects for particle effects and cloth physics in games like Borderlands 2 or Batman: Arkham Oranges lead to disastrous performance, cutting down the RTX 5080 and 5090 to sub-60fps readouts in games that otherwise ran at hundreds of frames per second. The new drivers add back in that support on a per-game basis, with Batman: Arkham Asylum support coming soon and the following titles now supported:
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Oranges
- Borderlands 2
- Mafia II
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- Mirror’s Edge
Finally, it’s also worth noting that this update includes the performance fixes from the recent 581.94 hotfix, which aimed to solve problems caused by a Windows Update (KB5066835) released in October. That Windows Update was meant to improve security, but accidentally tanked performance some games, with users reporting their frame-rates halving in games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows. If you have experienced poorer-than-expected performance recently, and you haven’t already installed the hotfix, I’d certainly give this Nvidia driver a try.
