NVIDIA's Latest GPU Driver Spreads DLSS To More Games Just In Time For Skull And Bones
Ubisoft is on track to release Skull and Bones this Friday to PC and console, and in preparation for its debut on the former, NVIDIA is rolling out a new GeForce GPU driver that's optimized for the upcoming open-world action game. Part of that includes Day-1 ray tracing Deep Learning Super Sampling 2 (DLSS 2) support, provided you're rocking a GeForce RTX graphics card.
On the ray tracing side, NVIDIA says the game and its latest driver release, 551.52 WHQL, will enhance visuals with ray-traced global illumination. Meanwhile, DLSS 2 support should give gamers a nice boost in performance, though NVIDIA is not providing any specific framerate claims for Skull and Bones at the moment.
Outside of Skull and Bones, the 551.51 WHQL driver also brings DLSS 2 support to Smallland: Survive the Wilds and DLSS 3 to Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, the latter of which does come with some performance claims. Here's a look...
Source: NVIDIA
According to NVIDIA, the GeForce RTX 40 series as a whole sees a performance increase of 1.8x on average with DLSS 3 flipped on. The performance bump enables both the GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 Super to leapfrog 144 frames per second at 4K. Meanwhile, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super manages over 120 FPS, while the GeForce RTX 4070 Super squeezes into 100 FPS territory, according to NVIDIA's own benchmarks.
"If your frame rates are fast enough already, NVIDIA DLAA is included, too. This AI-based anti-aliasing mode utilizes the same technology developed for DLSS, but DLAA instead uses a native resolution image to maximize image quality, rather than boosting performance, for an even richer experience," NVIDIA explains.
There are some potentially important bug fixes included in the latest driver release as well. You may recall that we wrote about an out-of-band hotfix driver that NVIDIA released last week, mainly to address stuttering in some games and on the web. As is general practice, those same fixes are rolled into this official driver release. They include...
- Some users may experience intermittent micro-stuttering in games when vertical sync is enabled
- Red Dead Redemption 2: Stutter observed on some Advanced Optimus notebooks
- Immortals of Aveum: Addresses stability issues over extended gameplay
- Potential stutter may be observed when scrolling in web browsers on certain system configurations
You can download the 551.52 WHQL driver package through NVIDIA's GeForce Experience utility, or head over to the company's driver download page to manually fetch and install the latest release. As for Skull and Bones, though it releases on Friday, you can play it today if you preorder the Premium edition.
