NVIDIA Releases the GeForce 372.54 WHQL Drivers

[Kaynar]

That's what you get for buying in to proprietary bullshit like that. If you're part of 1-3% of the total market share, prepare to be forgotten.

While it is indeed proprietary bullshit and i am against this kind of stuff and I was also prepared to be forgotten, I must admit that the effect GSYNC has on image quality is so much superior (than not having it) that I would rather not play a game without this tech. I have never seen FreeSync in action (since I bought gsync monitor much before Freesync was available) but if its anywhere near as good as gsync I would definitely choose AMD now. There are games like WoW where the effects of Gsync are not really observable, but in titles with crappy optimization like Path of Exile, or when there are sudden fps drops in a game, the difference of having gsync is phenomenal.

 

[RejZoR]

I already tried Fast Sync in Counter Strike GO and Arma 3 - fantastic!

It's in general less of an issue for me since I already have 144Hz monitor. If framerate shoots up to 144fps VSynced, that's still over 2x as much as people would get with 60Hz Vsynced. I'll try it anyway because why not, but I don't think it would make much difference for me. Will make a big difference for 60Hz monitor users though.

EDIT:
I don't quite get the point of FreeSync/G-Sync if these V-Sync modes already do all that and more since you're not software limited. Does it really sync "better" than these software options?

 

[FYFI13]

I don't quite get the point of FreeSync/G-Sync if these V-Sync modes already do all that and more since you're not software limited. Does it really sync "better" than these software options?

That's what i was wondering after trying out fast sync Adaptive sync was already great, now we got this.

 

[Vayra86]

While it is indeed proprietary bullshit and i am against this kind of stuff and I was also prepared to be forgotten, I must admit that the effect GSYNC has on image quality is so much superior (than not having it) that I would rather not play a game without this tech. I have never seen FreeSync in action (since I bought gsync monitor much before Freesync was available) but if its anywhere near as good as gsync I would definitely choose AMD now. There are games like WoW where the effects of Gsync are not really observable, but in titles with crappy optimization like Path of Exile, or when there are sudden fps drops in a game, the difference of having gsync is phenomenal.

I completely understand. And at the same time I am a stark believer in the idea that a PC needs to be comprised of interchangeable parts that are fully compatible with one another. Gsync breaks that nice little ecosystem by an effective vendor lock at a hefty price premium. I'll pass, and take the occasional tear for granted. Above 100 fps I can't even spot them, and after 15 minutes of play, I also don't notice anything anymore. For isometric games and wild FPS variation I tend to use FPS locks or adaptive Vsync, but to be honest I've grown very accustomed to having no sync and just an fps lock at max monitor refresh. I can probably count on one hand the games that have visible tearing in the past three years.

 

[Silent_Scone]

That's what you get for buying in to proprietary bullshit like that. If you're part of 1-3% of the total market share, prepare to be forgotten.

Better to check if the information is valid before posting, shows that you're speaking vicariously rather than experiencing these things for yourself.

I've not had the issue he has been speaking of.

 

[ViperXTR]

THis driver is crashing my system when playing Witcher 3 -__-

 

[Mussels]

fast Vsync 120FPS @ 60Hz in starcraft II looks rather beautiful...

 

[RejZoR]

Looks like Fast V-Sync won't be of much use to me with 144Hz screen. Still, it's a nice option in case I'll ever go back to 60Hz. Which is unlikely but oh well.

 

[LightningJR]

I am not sure how so many of you think fast sync is good... Maybe it's fine with an RTS but man it is not even close to smooth, you can see the dropped frames, the skipping when moving, it's horrible..

Just compare normal vsync to fast sync and you'll see what I mean, I can't be the only one that notices this..

What I do is turn on Rivatuner and set a FPS cap to 60FPS and turn on normal vsync, it reduced input lag significantly and syncs the FPS to the monitor it works in most games, it's a little trick I figured out.

 

[bug]

It's in general less of an issue for me since I already have 144Hz monitor. If framerate shoots up to 144fps VSynced, that's still over 2x as much as people would get with 60Hz Vsynced. I'll try it anyway because why not, but I don't think it would make much difference for me. Will make a big difference for 60Hz monitor users though.

EDIT:
I don't quite get the point of FreeSync/G-Sync if these V-Sync modes already do all that and more since you're not software limited. Does it really sync "better" than these software options?

Normal sync happens at regular intervals (be that 1/60th or 1/144th of a second). What G-Sync/FreeSyns does, it allows refreshes _between_ those regular intervals.
On a 60Hz monitor, normal refresh happens roughly every 16 ms. If a frame is not ready by then, it has to wait for the remainder of those 16 ms to pass, before being able to refresh. So if the video card takes 18ms to render, it will wait an additional 14ms to paint. With G-Sync/FreeSync, it can paint right away. I hope this clears things up for you.

 

[RejZoR]

So, what this does to a screen is it instructs when to refresh for each frame while still being constrained by the max screen refresh rate. So, technically, screen can do 57 Hz refreshes in total if FreeSync/GSync instructs it to do that, depending on GPU conditions. Even though 57Hz is not a standard refresh of any kind. Ok, I think I get it now.

 

[GreiverBlade]

woops i missed that release ... oh well correcting that now (though i had no DPC or other issues with the 368.81)

fast sync working? ... might try ... i avoided that because it was the root of nearly all issues of the previous drivers, and classed that "tech" as a "garbage"

THis driver is crashing my system when playing Witcher 3 -__-

argh ... i might have to rollback then ...

testing it right now

edit: Witcher 3 (GoG) no crashes so far

further, well steady increase of boost stability than before ... 1898mhz instead of 1775mhz

 

[TheOne]

AnandTech's GTX 1080/1070 review has a page on Fast Sync, for whatever its worth.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/13

 

[bug]

So, what this does to a screen is it instructs when to refresh for each frame while still being constrained by the max screen refresh rate. So, technically, screen can do 57 Hz refreshes in total if FreeSync/GSync instructs it to do that, depending on GPU conditions. Even though 57Hz is not a standard refresh of any kind. Ok, I think I get it now.

Yeah, not exactly. Here's a better description (sorry about including the proprietary one, they both work almost exactly the same): http://www.anandtech.com/show/7582/nvidia-gsync-review
It's not acting like a 57Hz display, but more like phase cloak (hope you're into Sci-Fi). Sorry, don't know how to explain it better, I hope Anand does a better job.

 

[racedaemon]

The Fast v-sync showed up for me too with a 960. Previously the help underneath the v-sync setting mentioned "Fast" but it was not present in the list. I did not notice any issues with video playback in YouTube like someone mentioned. But one still has to change the dynamic range of the monitor to "full" if it is connected with a hdmi cable. This annoys me greatly.

<rant>
How many people notice the reduced dynamic range and know how to change the settings? This leaves a lot of people with washed out colors. No wonder they will consider AMD better if they ever try one of their cards. Common Nvidia, get your s#%t together! The hdmi standard offers more than enough information trough the cable to determine if it is a TV or a monitor. Secondly, do modern TVs still use limited dynamic range? Just make full the default if it is that hard to determine the type of display.
</rant>

 

[bug]

The Fast v-sync showed up for me too with a 960. Previously the help underneath the v-sync setting mentioned "Fast" but it was not present in the list. I did not notice any issues with video playback in YouTube like someone mentioned. But one still has to change the dynamic range of the monitor to "full" if it is connected with a hdmi cable. This annoys me greatly.

<rant>
How many people notice the reduced dynamic range and know how to change the settings? This leaves a lot of people with washed out colors. No wonder they will consider AMD better if they ever try one of their cards. Common Nvidia, get your s#%t together! The hdmi standard offers more than enough information trough the cable to determine if it is a TV or a monitor. Secondly, do modern TVs still use limited dynamic range? Just make full the default if it is that hard to determine the type of display.
</rant>

Not sure what you're ranting about. TVs aren't wide-gamut or 10bit per channel capable. They just do some crappy things with backlight illumination to be able to claim a bazillion-to-one contrast ratio.

Fwiw, my old 660Ti doesn't have the FastSync option (as expected), but it is listed in the help text below. That'll cost them a few support tickets for being lazy

 

[Mussels]

Not sure what you're ranting about. TVs aren't wide-gamut or 10bit per channel capable. They just do some crappy things with backlight illumination to be able to claim a bazillion-to-one contrast ratio.

Fwiw, my old 660Ti doesn't have the FastSync option (as expected), but it is listed in the help text below. That'll cost them a few support tickets for being lazy

eh... my 2014 TV/monitor is. Does 10 bit HDMI, but accepts 12 bit input. Nvidia drivers default to 8 bit with limited range and it looks crap in comparison.

 

[racedaemon]

eh... my 2014 TV/monitor is. Does 10 bit HDMI, but accepts 12 bit input. Nvidia drivers default to 8 bit with limited range and it looks crap in comparison.

That's interesting. My monitor defaults to limited dynamic range after driver install but the color depth is correctly set to 32-bit and the format to RGB. So they try to do some detecting of what are the capabilities of the connected display. The problem is they suck at it.

 

[kn00tcn]

i'm still not understanding what happens to fast sync if you cap to 60 & when the fps goes below 60

Not sure what you're ranting about. TVs aren't wide-gamut or 10bit per channel capable. They just do some crappy things with backlight illumination to be able to claim a bazillion-to-one contrast ratio.

really? you've never noticed the limited/full option in every driver, console device, video player software, or sometimes monitor osd? this standard predates the extra features you just listed (which keywords of bit or gamut were not mentioned)

what he is talking about is the fact that television broadcast standards have been 16-235 brightness for decades, rather than the 0-255 we're used to on a computer

the problem is certain software, monitors, or drivers try to poorly decide for themselves, it's the same situation with amd's drivers turning on overscan when you use hdmi so there are constant complaints about 'my desktop image is cut off & blurry' from amd users

That's interesting. My monitor defaults to limited dynamic range after driver install but the color depth is correctly set to 32-bit and the format to RGB. So they try to do some detecting of what are the capabilities of the connected display. The problem is they suck at it.

currently i'm on a 570m, laptop only has hdmi out, i use an adapter to attach it to the dvi port of my monitor, now even though my desktop colors are correct, i still have to go to the nvcp video settings to force rgb-full so that firefox youtube isnt washed out (remember, 16 is dark grey, 235 is light grey), i assume FF isnt telling the driver something since MPCHC or opera webkit browser do not need this adjustment when nvcp is set to 'let the application decide'

 

[ViperXTR]

edit: Witcher 3 (GoG) no crashes so far

further, well steady increase of boost stability than before ... 1898mhz instead of 1775mhz

Hmm, might just be me, this just happened after updating drivers. Would try to look at other things

Also, fast sync is a hit or miss for me. The dropped frames can be quite visible through some stutter specially when there is a large fluctuation of fps and the driver strives to drop a lot of frames just to meet the refresh rate. Locking the fps seems to minimize it but not disappear completely.

 

[johnspack]

Hope they haven't already started to cripple my 970s performance... I'm scared to install this.... heh

 

[$ReaPeR$]

installed it yesterday, and haven't noticed any difference until now..

 

[racedaemon]

currently i'm on a 570m, laptop only has hdmi out, i use an adapter to attach it to the dvi port of my monitor, now even though my desktop colors are correct, i still have to go to the nvcp video settings to force rgb-full so that firefox youtube isnt washed out (remember, 16 is dark grey, 235 is light grey), i assume FF isnt telling the driver something since MPCHC or opera webkit browser do not need this adjustment when nvcp is set to 'let the application decide'

Are the settings under "Change resolution" correct? I don't see why the nvida driver would individually influence software if the main setting is correctly set. That sounds more like a setting in Firefox or in a codec. Is the video in Firefox HTML5 or flash?

Anyway, there are two places that affect color, one is under "Change resolution" (i think that is the main one and affects everything) and the other is under "Adjust video color settings" (that affects only what is detected as video). Maybe try to do a clean driver install. The other possibility would be a conflict with the intel video driver that also has a lot of video related settings.

 

[Mussels]

Are the settings under "Change resolution" correct? I don't see why the nvida driver would individually influence software if the main setting is correctly set. That sounds more like a setting in Firefox or in a codec. Is the video in Firefox HTML5 or flash?

Anyway, there are two places that affect color, one is under "Change resolution" (i think that is the main one and affects everything) and the other is under "Adjust video color settings" (that affects only what is detected as video). Maybe try to do a clean driver install. The other possibility would be a conflict with the intel video driver that also has a lot of video related settings.

what he's saying is things look fine on his desktop, but hte problem is more clear elsewhere.

I also saw very similar problems when i was on AMD, its just that Nvidia seems to forget/reset the setting more often.

 

[racedaemon]

what he's saying is things look fine on his desktop, but hte problem is more clear elsewhere.

I also saw very similar problems when i was on AMD, its just that Nvidia seems to forget/reset the setting more often.

I understood that. But i was just stating the obvious just in case he missed that setting under "Change resolution". I know i sometimes miss obvious thing because i look at the granular settings first. Also having the full/limited dynamic range setting change on me i know that things can seem normal. The last time i forgot to change the setting immediately after installing the driver it took me a couple of days to realize i had limited dynamic range.