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Nvidia releases GeForce Game Ready 375.86 WHQL drivers

by Mark Tyson on 16 November 2016, 10:01

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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Nvidia started to roll out its new GeForce Game Ready 375.86 WHQL drivers yesterday via the GeForce Experience, and later via direct download. The new driver set was headlined as being optimised for updated versions of Battlefield 1, Civilization VI, Tom Clancy's The Division, and ready for Steep's Open Beta.

As usual, Nvidia breathlessly urged users to find the updated driver for their system and "download now". It said the new driver would benefit Steep open beta players, for example, with "the fastest framerates in-game and in the benchmark, and the smoothest experience when hurtling down a hill". Those enjoying Battlefield 1, Civilization VI and The Division would also benefit from the "fastest and smoothest experience," it boasted.

However it has become apparent that all isn't well with 375.86 WHQL. So if you are hovering over the download or even the install button it looks like it is best to wait, for now. A quick look at the Nvidia GeForce forums, the Official 375.86 Game Ready WHQL Display Driver Feedback Thread (Released 11/15/16) thread in particular, reveals various issues concerning flickering graphics and slow graphics memory clocks.

The flickering issues look to be the worst if you are an SLI user playing Battlefield 1. There are reports of other games and configs with newfound flickering problems though. Perhaps more serious and more widespread is a performance nosedive reported, due to memory clocks getting stuck at 810MHz. This results in very low performance in 'every game' it seems – games that previously maintained a steady 60fps are now struggling with 20fps performance say several users.

If you have updated to this 375.86 WHQL driver, the easy answer to get back your performance is to reinstall the previous driver. If you haven't updated yet, it looks like you should hold back for now and keep an eye on the GeForce blog and forums.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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They need to pull these. I downloaded it last night and installed the same way that I always do. Tick custom install, select just the gpu and physx driver, select clean install and let it do it's thing. Fired up a game and noticed the pc only pulling 152w instead of the normal 230w for that game. Shut the game down and fired up afterburner with it's OSD and started the game again to find my 1070's memory clock stuck at 810mhz. I have gone back to 375.75 again now and everything is as it should be.
You do wonder just how much testing Nvidia are doing. That's at least two of the most recent driver updates that have had fairly severe bugs, and this one should have been blatantly obvious the moment anyone fired up a game.
That might explain an oddity I noticed - downloading the 375.70 drivers to see if that is the reason.
CAT-THE-FIFTH
That might explain an oddity I noticed - downloading the 375.70 drivers to see if that is the reason.

Nope,Planetside 2 just being Planetside 2.
The flickering has been around for years. Im 99% sure its how NVIDIA “cheats” by not displaying full graphics and gaining few fps so they look better against AMD. Really, ive used nvidia for good 5+ years and graphic glitches/flickers have never been as bad as now.

By the way, if you want to play BF1, you have to update driver or game just refuses to start, even though i bet it would work fine. The changes only affect dx12, which nobody uses since its horrible compared to dx11. It seems to only benefit high end systems. Funny since dx12 was supposed to benefit the crappy systems, not the way around. And somehow I also don't think it's DICE fault, when looking how bf4 performed on mantle - it was great. So when very CPU bottlenecked game like bf1 can't repeat that with dx12 it somehow makes me think dx12 will be a fluke. Or everyone will need new hardware, like with mantle. Also defeating purpose.