Nvidia’s first driver update of 2021 has arrived

Nvidia has released the first driver update for 2021, featuring security updates and bug fixes. Nvidia may have dropped lots of exciting new GeForce hardware last year, but with the 461.09 update we won’t be seeing any game-specific optimization or support for any of the new video cards.

A security bulletin is available with details on the security updates, but most of the actual bug fixes are more specifically relevant to GTX 1080 Ti users than other GeForce hardware, who have been experiencing many of the below-mentioned bugs. 

If you’re not currently experiencing any issues with your Nvidia GPU (graphics processing unit) then you can actually skip this altogether for now, a rarity for Nvidia driver updates. For anyone experiencing screen flicker or system freezes though, 461.09 may fix the issues blighting your system.

New Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Drivers usually come out about once a month, though they can occasionally coincide with the launch of popular new games so that the included updates optimize specific performance. For more information on Nvidia driver updates (and why you shouldn’t usually ignore them), head on over to our guide to keeping your GeForce hardware updated.

You can download the 461.09 update yourself over on the Nvidia site, as well as read the full list of patches and bug fixes, as well as the accompanying release notes. We’ve included a handful below:

Game ready driver fixes

• GeForce Experience: The FPS counter is activated and the overlay appears on Windows Mail and Calendar applications.
• GeForce GTX 750 Ti: Blue-screen crash (UNEXPECTED KERNEL MODE TRAP) may occur.
• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: The desktop screen may flicker.
• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: The system may freeze with the screen displaying as solid color.
• HDR: With HDR enabled, black levels are incorrect, notably on LG OLED TVs.
• Lenovo Y740: The notebook displays corruption after waking from sleep.
• Blue-screen crash (0x116) may occur upon resuming from sleep mode when three 4k monitors are connected.

Open issues

• X4: Foundations: The game may crash on GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs.
• X4: Foundations (Vulkan): HUD in the game is broken.
• Batman Arkham Knight: The game crashes when turbulence smoke is enabled.
• Detroit: Become Human: The game randomly crashes.
• Steam VR game: Stuttering and lagging occur upon launching a game.
• G-SYNC: NVIDIA Ampere/Turing GPU architecture: GPU power consumption may increase in idle mode on systems using certain higher refresh-rate G-SYNC monitors.
• YouTube: Video playback stutters while scrolling down the YouTube page.
• Notebook: Some Pascal-based notebooks with high refresh rate displays may randomly drop to 60Hz during gameplay.
• G-Sync (Vulkan Apps): Performance drop occurs when using G-SYNC and switching from full-screen mode to windowed mode using the in-game settings.
• To workaround, either launch the game in windowed mode directly or disable G-SYNC.
• GeForce RTX 3070 (Clone Mode): When the resolution is set to 2560×1440 @ 144Hz, the performance state is stuck at maximum performance.
• NVIDIA Turing or later (Windows Movies and TV Player): When playing a 4k video in fullscreen mode on a 2560×1440 HDR monitor, the video extends beyond the edge of the screen.