NVIDIA GeForce 465.89 WHQL driver adds Resizable BAR and virtualization support

NVIDIA rolls out the GeForce 465.89 WHQL driver. This release has optimizations for Outriders, the ray tracing update for DiRT 5, Evil Genius 2: World Domination, and the KINGDOM HEARTS Series. You can download the driver over here.

Resizable BAR driver support arrives

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 already supported Resizable BAR and now driver support arrives for the other GeForce RTX 30 series desktop and laptop video cards. Whether you'll be able to use Resizable BAR depends on a lot of factors, I've discussed the requirements in this article. Basically, it's only supported on new platforms, requires an updated motherboard BIOS, new firmware for the video card, and a supporting driver. The latter part is taken care of with GeForce 465.89 WHQL (and newer).

Game profiles will be used to enable Resizable BAR. NVIDIA says it will only activate the feature in cases where it makes sense. Resizable BAR can deliver up to 5 percent higher performance, and in extreme cases as much as 12 percent, but in some scenarios, it can lower performance. At the moment, NVIDIA has Resizable BAR profiles for 17 games. More titles will be added via future GeForce driver releases.

Beta support for GPU virtualization

Another cool feature is that GeForce GPUs now support GPU virtualization. Enabling GPU passthrough beta support for a Windows virtual machine will allow Linux users to play Windows video games via a Windows virtual machine. The new feature is explained in detail over here.

With virtualization enabled, GeForce customers on a Linux host PC can now enable GeForce GPU passthrough on a virtual Windows guest OS. There are a few GeForce use cases where this functionality is beneficial such as:

- GeForce customers wanting to run a Linux host and be able to launch a Windows virtual machine (VM) to play games
- Game developers wanting to test code in both Windows and Linux on one machine

Support is offered for Kepler and newer for the desktop platform, and Maxwell and newer for laptops.

Bug fixes

NVIDIA also fixed the following bugs with the launch of GeForce 465.89 WHQL:

[Rainbow Six Siege][Vulkan]: Smoke appears pixelated. [3266916]

[Vulkan][X4: Foundations 4.00/X4: Cradle of Humanity] The game may crash on GeForce RTX 30 Series. [200701230]

[GeForce RTX 3090]: Blue-screen crash occurs when Samsung Odyssey G9 is paired with HDMI TV. [3240366]

[GeForce RTX 2060]: Blue-screen crash (DPC_WATCHDOGS_VIOLATION) occurs when playing a game and watching YouTube video simultaneously. [3196272]

[Sunset Overdrive]: The application may display random green corruption if Depth of Field is enabled from in-game settings [2750770]

Realtek Displayport-to-HDMI 2.1 protocol converter clock limited to 600MHz pixel clock [3202060]

[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. [200667566].

[GFE Screenshot/HDR]: Application screenshots are washed out when HDR is enabled [3229781]

The Witcher 3 is getting ray tracing update

In slightly related news, CD Project RED announced the new version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will ship in the second half of this year. It's kinda hard to believe but the original is already six years old. The new version is taken care of by Saber Interactive, the same developer that created the 4K version of The Witcher 3 for the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro.

It's described as a "next gen upgrade" that will deliver ray tracing support, other visual enhancements, and shorter game load times. CD Projekt RED will release the next gen version of The Witcher 3 for the PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.

The best news is that the update will be free for existing The Witcher 3 owners.