The headline act is undoubtedly the expanded support for DLSS 4, NVIDIA’s deep learning super sampling technology. This promises significant performance boosts in Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, allowing gamers to crank up the settings without sacrificing frame rates. It’s the kind of magic trick that makes you wonder how you ever gamed without it.
But what about the nitty-gritty? Beyond the headline features, the 591.44 driver addresses a laundry list of niggling issues that have been plaguing gamers. Consider it a digital spring cleaning for your GPU.
Stability issues in Battlefield 6? Gone. Text distortion in Counter-Strike 2 when running below native resolution? Eradicated. Flickering and corruption in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Like a Dragon Gaiden after previous driver updates? History. NVIDIA is clearly listening to the community and working hard to iron out the wrinkles.
- Black Myth: Wukong: Performance issues on post-R570 branches have been addressed.
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne: Missing particle effects on RTX 50 Series hardware are back.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 3: A long-standing dimming issue has been resolved.
- Madden 26: Stability drops are a thing of the past.
Even those annoying Windows 11 quirks haven’t escaped NVIDIA’s attention. Slower performance on systems running the Windows 11 October KB5066835 update has been rectified, and intermittent artifacting affecting The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is no more. Finally, you can enjoy Geralt’s adventures without visual glitches ruining the immersion.
It’s not all about gaming, though. Content creators get some love too. NVIDIA has resolved Premiere Pro export freezes during hardware encoding, a welcome fix for anyone who’s ever stared at a frozen progress bar. System stability issues related to Sophos Home Antivirus have also been addressed, and green-line video playback artifacts in Chromium browsers on RTX 50 Series GPUs are gone. It’s a win-win for both work and play.
As with any major driver release, there’s always a bit of housekeeping. As previously announced, this driver marks the complete deprecation of GeForce GTX 900 series Maxwell and GTX 10 series Pascal GPUs. Support on Linux had already began on Linux, signaling the end of an era for these venerable cards.
While this might sting for owners of older hardware, it’s a necessary step to focus resources on supporting the latest and greatest GPUs. Time marches on, and technology along with it.
The initial reaction from the community seems mixed. Some users are reporting performance gains, while others are experiencing regressions. As one user, R-T-B, noted on the forums, there was a slight performance increase, stating, “That’s beyond statisticsl margin of error, if only barely, but yeah. Sure you still have the same OC and all the obvious other stuff? Wonder why.” Another user, erek, reported a performance drop, posting comparison links on 3DMark: www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/60285460/spy/60303128. It’s always wise to approach new drivers with a healthy dose of skepticism and test them thoroughly on your own system.
The GeForce 591.44 driver is a significant release, packed with optimizations and bug fixes that should improve the gaming experience for many. The DLSS 4 enhancements are particularly exciting, offering a glimpse into the future of upscaling technology. As always, it’s recommended to back up your system before installing any new driver, and to monitor performance closely to ensure a smooth transition. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a virtual battlefield to conquer.
