NVIDIA Releases 378.92 WHQL Driver: Mass Effect and Dolby Vision for Games
by Daniel Williams on March 21, 2017 7:00 AM EST
This week in a relatively brief driver update, NVIDIA has released their Game Ready driver for the newly released Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Following with the 378 branch, 378.92 adds official Game Ready support for the game. This includes the usual driver optimizations as well as an SLI profile for EA's soon-to-be blockbuster game. Alongside Mass Effect, we are also getting game ready support for Rock Band VR, and updated SLI profiles for Dead Rising 4 and Deus Ex: Breach.
However buried in this driver release is a second noteworthy and interesting feature addition: NVIDIA is also enabling Dolby Vision support for games. Dolby's competing HDR transport standard is arguably a higher fidelity standard than HDR10 thanks to aspects such as its 12bpc color modes, however its proprietary nature has limited its adoption versus HDR10. And while we're still early in the days of HDR PC monitors – the first HDR10 monitors don't even ship until later this month – Dolby Vision hasn't been on the PC monitor roadmap at all.
In any case, the addition of Dolby Vision appears to be aimed at use with TVs, where high-end models do offer Dolby Vision support. So for those users out there who own the necessary TV, an NVIDIA card, and Mass Effect: Andromeda (the sole Dolby Vision-enabled PC game), they should be in for a treat.
Anyone interested can download the updated drivers through GeForce Experience or on the NVIDIA driver download page. More information on this update and further issues can be found in the 378.92 release notes.
Source: NVIDIA
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Phattio - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
it's kindergarten, you kindergartner.Manch - Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - link
^^^This!! LOLHomeworldFound - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
Wow, SLI profiles. That makes me pretty happy considering how many games have had SLI profiles removed lately.Adm_SkyWalker - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
I have my a TV with DV (LG OLED HDR) and I run my PC on it (2xTitan X Pascal). I own 3 games with HDR so I decided to do some quick testing.ME:A & Obduction - Only used the TV's HDR10 both before and after the patch.
Hitman - HDR was turned on but didn't activate on the TV, neither (HDR10 or DV). It that Hitman's HDR has always been buggy (at least for me). This may be a separate issue entirely.
Based on my limited testing. None of my games, perhaps no PC game period, can use DV. This is most likely a developer issue. Nvidia PCs are now the only device that can use DV. So why develop something that may not be used. It's also possible that DV only works on the lastest Nvidia card (1080 Ti) but if that's the case. Why not tell us. Either way I don't think we'll see DV in our games for a awhile. Best case, BioWare patches it into Mass Effect Andromeda.
Adm_SkyWalker - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
Obviously I glazed over the note that Mass Effect: Andromeda supports Dolby Vision. My bad. Regardless, I can't get it to use Dolby Vision. Just HDR10. I'll do some more testing, maybe contact BioWare support, and then post the results.nathanddrews - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
You might have to enable 12bpc 4:2:0 in order to make it work.Adm_SkyWalker - Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - link
First thing I tried. Same result. Checked my drivers and even disabled SLI. Same result. I did some searching with google and the support site. This seems to be a common issues. No one has found a fix yet. The Game can't detect DV and you can't select DV manually. Guess we'll have to wait on support to find the issue.http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=413407
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/dolby-vi...
krazyfrog - Friday, March 24, 2017 - link
Since you have a PC connected to HDR enabled TV, what other content besides games have you been able to play in HDR on the TV? I am considering getting a 4K HDR TV to connect to my PC but not sure how much of the content available (Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube) actually works in HDR on the PC.Adm_SkyWalker - Monday, March 27, 2017 - link
To answer your question, krazyfrog, I have been unable to try any other apps. To my knoldge the only other PC media that supports 4K is NETFLIX but that requires the latest Intel CPU's that support 4K. Even then, I don't know if it supports HDR. Keep in mind, 4K media support on the PC has been slow. This is mainly because content providers strongly prefer systems that support the latest version of HDCP.Back to the issue of DV. I've done some more research and the problem is on my TV's end. LG 2016 TVs support DV but not over HDMI. I don't blame, external DV support was almost non-existent. No word on if they will add it via firmware update.
xchaotic - Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - link
Are there any true 12 bit displays out there? As I understand even OLED is 10bit?