Today marks the release of one of the biggest GeForce driver updates in months, as Nvidia unveiled their ‘Gamescom Game Ready Driver’ with big performance improvements and long-requested features like GPU integer scaling, an ultra-low latency mode and a new Freestyle sharpening filter. The new driver is out today at 6AM Pacific Time (2PM BST/3PM CEST).
The most exciting addition for competitive gamers is the ultra-low latency mode, a setting accessible in Nvidia Control Panel that reduces latency by up to 33 per cent by “submitting frames to be rendered just before the GPU needs them.” The new mode seems to be a direct response to AMD’s recent inclusion of the Radeon Anti-Lag feature on its RX 5700 series graphics cards, which works in a similar fashion.
This kind of just-in-time scheduling is more complex than the previous “maximum pre-rendered frames” setting in the Nvidia Control Panel, despite having the same goal of reducing latency. Instead of reducing the number of frames in the queue to ensure that the frame being drawn contains the most up-to-date information, the ultra-low latency mode controls the pacing of these frames so they’re generated at the last possible (micro)second before they’re needed.
Nvidia suggest that the feature is most effective in GPU-bound scenarios between 60 and 100fps; CPU-heavy titles like CS:GO that run at extremely high frame-rates see more subdued improvements. Ultra-low latency mode is being released in beta for now, and works on DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 titles – in more modern APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, the game itself is in charge of queuing frames rather than the graphics driver so this setting doesn’t have an effect.