Nvidia has rolled out its latest Game Ready driver for its GeForce RTX graphics cards. Version 536.99 goes big on Baldur's Gate 3 support, with Nvidia claiming that enabling DLSS 2 boosts performance by an average of 93% across its latest RTX 40-series of GPUs.
Nvidia says the driver delivers "additional optimizations and enhancements to further improve the hundreds of hours you’ll spend playing this epic role-playing game."
By way of example, Nvidia's numbers show the RTX 4060 Ti increases from 35.5fps at 4K max settings to 77.9fps with DLSS 2 enabled. To be clear, that's the performance of the 4060 Ti with DLSS 2 either enabled or disabled. The new driver isn't doubling performance with the same settings.
Indeed, Nvidia isn't making any specific claims for performance increases with like-for-like settings. So, it's probable that the gains are modest. After all, Nvidia would be sure to shout about major step in pure driver-related performance.
Of course, DLSS 2 is compatible with both RTX 30- and RTX 20-series, too. So, there should be some good DLSS gains to be had with GPUs from both generations.
That said, the RTX 20-series in particular has what are now pretty elderly Tensor Cores. So, we wouldn't expect the DLSS uplift to be quite as dramatic with those earliest of RTX-branded cards.
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Along with adding some polish to the Baldur's Gate 3 experience, the new Game Ready Driver 536.99 also buffs up performance and reliability in horror schlock The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and single-player adventure-strategy game Gord. Both games get the full DLSS 2 treatment.
Notably, all the noise across all three titles supported by the new driver concerns DLSS 2 support and notably not DLSS 3. So, there's no Frame Generation implementation for any of these games for now.
Incidentally, Baldur's Gate 3 is also now on Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud servers running on RTX 4080s delivering what Nvidia describes as a "flawless" 4K120Hz experience.
All of which means you now have even more reason to burn endless hours on Larian's epic D&D-derived adventure. You can download the new driver here.
