CES 2020: NVIDIA’s Latest Game Ready Driver Adds Max Frame Rate Option

With their latest Game Ready Driver (441.87 WHQL) NVIDIA has added what they say has been “the number one community requested feature”: Max Frame Rate. This feature allows you to, as you’d expect, set a maximum frame rate for a game or other 3D application, which can be useful for a few reasons, as NVIDIA points out:

• Saving Power: Enable Max Frame Rate (NVIDIA Control Panel > 3D Settings > Max Frame Rate) and set your power management mode to “Optimal Power”(NVIDIA Control Panel > 3D Settings > Power Management Mode). While in this mode, GPU frequency is reduced and uses less power. For laptop users, Max Frame Rate also works alongside with Battery Boost and Whisper Mode. If either of these modes are enabled at the same time as Max Frame Rate, the NVIDIA Control Panel will cap the framerate to the lowest of the limits.
• Reducing System Latency: Enable Max Frame Rate and set your power management mode to “Prefer maximum performance” to reduce latency. While in this mode, the GPU is kept at higher frequencies to process frames as quickly as possible. To maximize latency reduction in GPU bound scenarios where FPS is consistent, set Max Frame Rate to a framerate slightly below the average FPS and turn Low Latency Mode to Ultra.
• Staying in VRR Range: Set the Max Frame Rate slightly below the maximum refresh rate of your display to stay within the Variable Refresh Rate range – providing a no-tear, low system latency experience! For the smoothest, no tear experience, set the low latency mode to Ultra and turn VSYNC on.

Another feature added to the latest driver is Variable Rate Supersampling (VRSS), which NVIDIA says “is a new technique to improve image quality in VR games”.

It uses NVIDIA Variable Rate Shading (VRS), a key feature in NVIDIA’s Turing architecture, to dynamically apply up to 8x supersampling to the center of the VR headset display, where the eye is generally focused. It intelligently applies supersampling only when GPU headroom is available in order to maintain the VR headset’s fixed FPS and ensure a smooth VR experience.

The full article on these – and other – features with the latest Game Ready Driver (including an update to image sharpening and a new Freestyle Splitscreen filter) is available from NVIDIA here, and the driver page (with release notes) can be found here.