NVIDIA's hotfix for new GPU driver includes Valorant cure - but probably not the fixes you want

Hotfix version 572.24 for the new graphics driver fixes Valorant and Final Fantasy XVI crashing, but doesn't address some more pressing issues.

NVIDIA's hotfix for new GPU driver includes Valorant cure - but probably not the fixes you want
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Tech Reporter
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TL;DR: NVIDIA has rushed out a hotfix for issues affecting Valorant and Final Fantasy XVI players. The Hotfix Display Driver version 572.24 addresses crashes in Valorant for RTX 5080 owners, and a freezing issue with Final Fantasy XVI affecting those running Windows 11 version 23H2.

NVIDIA has swiftly deployed a hotfix for a problem that was hitting Valorant players who've managed to grab a shiny new Blackwell GPU, a bug that caused the game to crash.

And yes, we'd expect that's a small niche of PC gamers who play the team shooter, given how difficult it is to secure an RTX 5090 or 5080, but it's an important fix for those people of course. Plus on top of this there's also a cure for a nasty crash with Final Fantasy XVI.

These fixes are in the GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 572.24, which is applied to the latest Game Ready Driver, version 572.16, the release which brings in support for the new RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards (and DLSS 4 as well, don't forget).

As NVIDIA makes clear in the hotfix notes, for those with an RTX 5080 graphics card, Valorant may crash when starting the game. Seemingly this doesn't affect the RTX 5090 GPU, which strikes us as rather odd.

At any rate, as for the Final Fantasy XVI bug, this one causes the PC to freeze up at the other end of the playing experience - meaning when exiting the game, rather than firing it up. This problem is not specific to any NVIDIA GPU model, new or older, but rather, to a certain version of Windows 11, namely 23H2.

So, this is one scenario where a PC gamer would be pleased to have upgraded to the 24H2 update, which has been causing nothing but trouble for gaming in general since it was released - yet in this case, has sidestepped a problem.

As you might have noticed, there have been some other issues with PC games crashing, as flagged up by TechRadar recently. That includes Spider-Man 2 repeatedly crashing (with a Blue Screen of Death) when trying to enable frame generation, a spiky little issue for which there isn't a cure yet. Ditto for a driver-related bug whereby Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 fails to start.

The biggest worry of all, though, for the new driver from NVIDIA are the reports that it's causing some RTX 5090 graphics cards not to be recognized by the PC. This may be a problem with PCIe compatibility, as in some cases, switching away from PCIe 5.0 to PCIe 4.0 (in the BIOS) has proved a successful solution. Not everyone has had their RTX 5090 blues cured in this way, though, so this is a bugbear we need to keep a watchful eye on.

Tech Reporter

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Darren has written for numerous magazines and websites in the technology world for almost 30 years, including TechRadar, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, Computeractive, and many more. He worked on his first magazine (PC Home) long before Google and most of the rest of the web existed. In his spare time, he can be found gaming, going to the gym, and writing books (his debut novel – ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ – was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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