Alongside the release of its new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia is unleashing a fresh graphics card driver which promises a performance boost in DirectX 12 games.
Those running DX12 games (under Windows 10) will benefit from driver optimizations which according to Nvidia will deliver an average performance boost of 16% across these various titles.
The biggest gains are to be seen in Rise of the Tomb Raider, with a rather incredible 33% boost to the frame rate, and Nvidia also boasts that Hitman will get a similarly chunky 23% improvement.
Gears of War 4 will be boosted to the tune of 10%, Ashes of the Singularity by 9%, and Tom Clancy’s The Division will get a more modest increase of 4%. Still, every extra bit of smoothness is welcome, as ever.
- DirectX 12 only works with Windows 10
Ansel antics
Better performance is the key point with this new driver, but those who like to take screenshots of their games will also be interested to learn that Nvidia Ansel support has arrived for another Tom Clancy game, namely Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Ansel (pictured above) is essentially a screen-grabber on steroids, pausing the game at the moment you wish to capture, and then allowing you to enter the game-world and move the camera around in 3D, zoom or reposition it, and get rid of the HUD or any other interface distractions to hopefully procure yourself a cracking image.
The system also makes it possible to save out super-high-resolution screenshots, and to polish them up with post-processing effects – plus you can capture 360-degree panoramic shots to gawk at using a VR headset, should you own one.
Ansel is currently supported in the likes of Dishonored 2, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Watch Dogs 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Witness, and it’ll be coming to other big titles, most notably in the near-future Mass Effect: Andromeda (which is out in a couple of weeks).
Speaking of the latter, yesterday saw Nvidia show off some rather spectacular-looking 4K HDR screenshots taken with Ansel, which you might want to have a gander at here.
- This is the best monitor for experiencing the benefits of DX12
