After yesterday's ray tracing news, today NVIDIA is focusing entirely on driver-level improvements and additions. First of all, a new 'Gamescom Game Ready driver' is out now, delivering a host of performance improvements in the following games: Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Strange Brigade and World War Z.

　　According to NVIDIA, these games can see up to a 23% performance gain, though that's an edge case with Apex Legends. Check out the performance charts below.

　　That's far from everything NVIDIA is announcing today, though. Minor additions introduce 30-bit color support and three new validated G-SYNC compatible displays (ASUS VG27A, ACER CP3271, and ACER XB273K GP).

　　Major additions available with today's driver include Integer Scaling to play pixel-art titles in the best possible way, an improved Sharpen filter for NVIDIA Freestyle and an Ultra-Low Latency mode that reportedly reduces latency by up to 33%. Clearly, the last two features are meant to be counters to AMD's sharpening filters and Anti-Lag technology introduced at E3 2019, even though NVIDIA dismissed both of them at the time.

　　With the release of our Gamescom Game Ready Driver, we’re introducing a new Ultra-Low Latency Mode that enables ‘just in time’ frame scheduling, submitting frames to be rendered just before the GPU needs them. This further reduces latency by up to 33%:

　　Low Latency modes have the most impact when your game is GPU bound, and framerates are between 60 and 100 FPS, enabling you to get the responsiveness of high-framerate gaming without having to decrease graphical fidelity.

　　To select a Low Latency mode, open the NVIDIA Control Panel, head to “Manage 3D Settings”, and scroll down to “Low Latency Mode”. Three options are available:

　　Off: The game’s engine will automatically queue 1-3 frames for maximum render throughputOn: Limits the number of queued frames to 1. This is the same setting as “Max_Prerendered_Frames = 1” from prior driversUltra: Submits the frame just in time for the GPU to pick it up and start rendering

　　Our new Low Latency Mode is being released in beta with support for all GPUs in DX9 and DX11 games (in DX12 and Vulkan titles, the game decides when to queue the frame).

GPU Integer Scaling: Sharper Upscaling for Retro and Pixel Art Games

　　Well, we’ve heard the call, and thanks to a hardware-accelerated programmable scaling filter available in Turing, GPU Integer Scaling is finally possible!

　　So if you have a GeForce RTX or GeForce GTX 16-Series GPU, and have installed our new Game Ready Driver, you can enable an Integer Scaling beta in the NVIDIA Control Panel, in the “Adjust Desktop Size and Position” Display menu:

　　When enabled in retro games, emulators and pixel-art titles that lack resolution-scaling filters, the difference in clarity and fidelity is dramatic:

　　On the left, FTL is seen running at 4K with traditional scaling, and on the right 4K with Integer Scaling, for a far clearer, sharper picture that preserves the game’s intended style and appearance

　　Please note, if you make your own image comparisons, they cannot be created with traditional screenshot techniques as the display scaler will be compared to the GPU scaler. Instead, photograph the display, or use a hardware capture card that records the final image as output to the screen.

GeForce Experience Adds New Freestyle Sharpening Filter

　　As part of our new Game Ready Driver, we are releasing a new Sharpen Freestyle filter with improved image quality and performance compared to our existing “Detail” Freestyle filter. The image quality of the new filter is improved, and the performance impact is roughly half that of the prior filter.

　　Freestyle sharpening is different from other solutions in a couple of ways: Freestyle gives gamers the ability to customize the amount of sharpness, from 0 to 100%, and apply this customization on a per game basis using the in-game overlay. We believe sharpness is based on personal preference and varies from game to game, so with Freestyle we designed a simple solution that remembers your settings in each game.

　　NVIDIA Freestyle also offers broader API support than other solutions, letting you enhance over 600 games DX9, DX11, DX12 and Vulkan API games. And we’ll continue to add support for more as part of our Game Ready Driver releases.

　　To use NVIDIA Freestyle, install GeForce Experience, and press Alt+F3 to activate the Freestyle In-Game Overlay. Add the Sharpen Filter included in the latest game ready driver, as well as other filters to customize the look and feel of your game. Your preferences are saved separately for each game and applied for future sessions.