Nvidia has released a new driver track, optimized for users of Adobe apps, Blender, Cinema 4D, and others who prioritize stability.
Nvidia’s new Creator Ready driver track recognizes the many GeForce owners who use their less-expensive gaming-optimized consumer cards with professional applications. This track offers a more stable driver update cadence compared to their Game Ready drivers, which update frequently due to new game releases. Nvidia appears to be emphasizing thorough testing with professional applications for Creator Ready drivers.
Nvidia also claims speed improvements in Adobe Photoshop CC, Premiere Pro CC, Blender Cycles, and Cinema 4D. Additionally, there’s specific acceleration support with RTX cards for Unreal Engine 4.22, Photoshop Lightroom CC, Substance Designer, and Redcine-X Pro 51.
Nvidia has traditionally distinguished between workstation-certified Quadro graphics cards and their gaming-optimized GeForce cards. However, the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. It seems the company is loosening restrictions on its drivers for Turing- and Pascal-based GeForce cards, and even as far back as the Volta-based Titan V. The driver is also applicable to Quadro cards.
This move might be intended to appeal to game streamers and game designers, as these groups show increasing demand for discrete GPUs. Some might even speculate this aims to boost sales of the ray-tracing-accelerating GeForce RTX cards – which are much cheaper than the Quadro RTX cards.
Tests by Puget Systems, although not comprehensive, haven’t shown significant speed improvements with an RTX 2080 in Premiere Pro CC and Photoshop CC. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if software developers adapted their software to leverage the new drivers, resulting in performance changes.
The driver doesn’t offer improved 10-bit color support for applications (not just games), one of Nvidia’s factors in distinguishing workstation from consumer GPUs. For now, the game and creator drivers are essentially the same, just on different release cycles.
If there are no notable performance gains, it is always good practice to avoid automatically updating existing drivers. When possible, it’s best to wait and see if new drivers cause any issues before updating.
