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Nvidia’s RTX series has been arguably another forgettable and disappointed GPU launch in recent history. The new graphics cards have a number of issues, including a lackluster generation-to-generation performance improvement, melting power cables and VRAM allocations, a near-nonexistent launch stock, missing ROPs and software stability issues. Nvidia has tried to address bugs and crashes in recent driver updates. However, user complaints seem to persist.
ComputerBase forum users Report shows that Nvidia’s graphics drivers version 576.02 improve performance in 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark. Reddit users also have Several recent major games have shown a degraded performance.
ComputerBase confirmed that the RTX5090, 5080 Ti, 5070, and 5070 all see performance improvements between 6% and 8% with Steel Nomad. Users have posted screenshots on the site forums and Reddit showing score increases up to 2,000 after installing the driver.
However, their results for 3DMark’s Speed Way and Time Spy tests show unchanged performance or a slight 1% decline. Furthermore, Reddit users report continued crashes in titles such as Black Myth Wukong, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Monster Hunter Wilds. The errors in Rebirth and Monster Hunter appear to occur during shader compilation.
If the new crashes are widespread, they represent a potentially serious setback to Nvidia’s efforts to fight bugs that first emerged with the RTX 50 series launch. For months, users have reported frequent game crashes and instances where Windows boots into a black screen after installing drivers intended for the new GPUs.
Patch notes for several driver versions released since February claim that Nvidia has addressed these problems. However, some developers have advised users with RTX 40 or 30 series cards to stick with driver version 566.36, released in December.
These ongoing problems only add to the mounting challenges of the RTX series. The MSRPs were almost mythical at launch due to the critical shortage of stock. However, availability has improved in recent weeks.
In addition, most new GPUs only deliver modest performance gains compared to their RTX series counterparts. The RTX-5070 has been criticized for performing almost identically – or even worse than – the 4070 Super while facing stiff competition AMD’s Radeon RX9070 and 9070 XT.
Nvidia’s 576.02 drivers introduce support for the newly-released RTX-5060 Ti. As our review shows it, the RTX-5060 Ti offers a decent upgrade over the 4060 Ti if users choose the 16GB version. The company did not release 8GB versions to reviewers in order to avoid a backlash if they released another 8GB GPU by 2025.
