NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 397.31 adds RTX ray-tracing support for Volta

A new driver from NVIDIA hit the web, the GeForce Game Ready 397.31 WHQL provides optimizations for BattleTech and FrostPunk. This new release contains several new features, including support for NVIDIA RTX ray tracing technology, Vulkan 1.1, updates for HD Audio, some installer improvements, and the inclusion of the NVDECODE API. Do note that NVIDIA RTX is exclusively for Volta GPUs, so the only "gaming GPU" that can run it is the $2,999.99 NVIDIA Titan V.

There are some new or updated SLI and 3D Vision profiles, you can check those in the full changelog. I'm not listing them as these technologies are rarely used these days. Also worth mentioning is that this release no longer supports 32-bit operating systems, nor the NVIDIA Fermi GPU generation. But that was communicated weeks ago.

New Features
NVIDIA RTX Technology:
Developer preview for NVIDIA RTX ray tracing technology for DirectX 12. NVIDIA RTX supports the Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API on NVIDIA Volta GPUs. In order to get started with developing DirectX Raytracing applications accelerated by RTX, you'll need the following:

NVIDIA Volta GPU

NVIDIA driver version 396 or higher

Windows 10 RS4

Microsoft's DXR developer package, consisting of DXR-enabled D3D runtimes, HLSL compiler, and headers

Vulkan 1.1
This driver release provides full support for the new Vulkan 1.1 API and passes the Vulkan Conformance Test Suite (CTS) version 1.1.0.3.

HD Audio
This driver adds new sample rates 32 kHz, 88.2 kHz, and 176.4 kHz to the HDMI device for all GPUs.

Display Driver Standalone Installer
The standalone display driver installer now removes extracted files after installing the driver, leaving a smaller footprint on the hard drive.

Display Driver Libraries
Added new libraries (nvdlist.dll and nvdlistx.dll) to support Optimus and MSHybrid notebooks.

NVDECODE API
Added a new API that lets the client reconfigure the decoder resolution and other post processing parameters (such as the display resolution, cropping rectangle, and aspect ratio of the decoded frame) without having to destroy and recreate the decoder instance. This API is useful in scenarios where the decoder instance initialization time takes up a significant portion of the overall decode execution time; for example, in back-to-back decoding of multiple short clips of different resolutions.

The new API will be included in Video Codec SDK 8.2, which is expected to release in late Q2 2018.

Fixed Issues in this Release

[GeForce GTX 1080 Ti][Doom]: The game crashes due to the driver reverting to OpenGL 1.1 when HDR is enabled. [2049623]

[GeForce GTX 1060][Far Cry 5]: The game crashes after a few minutes of game play. [2096077]

NvfbcPluginWindow temporarily prevents Windows from shutting down after launching a Steam game. [2068833]

[Firefox]: Driver TDR error may occur when using Firefox. [2049523]

[GeForce GTX 1060][Rise of Tomb Raider]: Flickering/corruption occurs when opening the in-game options UI. [200351146]

[NVIDIA Control Panel][SLI][Diablo III]: With V-Sync on and SLI enabled, the game freezes after switching windows (ALT+TAB) a few times. [1951584]

You can download it manually via this page.