Nvidia RTX graphics card owners just got a big free performance upgrade

(Image credit: Nvidia)

published 13 October 2022

You don't necessarily need to buy a new version of one of the best graphics cards to give your PC a serious upgrade: thanks to a new driver update from Nvidia, users of RTX cards from the RTX 30 to the new RTX 4090 are all getting a significant performance upgrade.

Nvidia has provided details of the driver upgrade on its official website, and says that the update applies whether you have the RTX 4090 or "a previous-generation GeForce RTX graphics card or laptop". You'll find it in the Drivers tab of the GeForce Experience app in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

What does the Nvidia RTX update deliver?

The update includes "new DirectX 12 optimizations that can improve performance by double digits in popular titles," Nvidia says, and there's also support for the latest DLSS 2 Super Resolution games with improved performance there too.

There are also game-specific optimisations of the likes of Gotham Nights, A Plague Tale: Requiem and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection. Although Nvidia talks about Series 30 cards, presumably there will also be improvements to Series 20 models too.

The driver update also ensures the best performance in DLSS 3 games. There aren't many of those right now, but there are plenty on the horizon.

You won't get massive performance improvements in everything, of course. But the results are going to be very impressive in a lot of titles, with Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla in 1080p getting 20% and 24% performance boosts respectively.

The 522.25 update is available now.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).