Nvidia pushed out another targeted driver update in late April 2025, GeForce Hotfix 576.26, signaling ongoing efforts to refine the user experience on its then-new RTX 50-series graphics cards. This optional driver aimed squarely at a list of persistent bugs reported by owners of the Blackwell-based GPUs, addressing issues ranging from game-specific crashes to display problems that emerged following the series’ initial rollout earlier that year. Released shortly after the mainstream RTX 5060 Ti hit shelves on April 16th, the update signals a period of frequent patching for the new architecture.
Squashing Bugs in Blackwell
Hotfix 576.26, confirmed via Nvidia’s official forums and requiring manual download, contained fixes for several notable problems affecting RTX 50 users. Game stability was a major target: crashes in Black Myth: Wukong during a transformation sequence, issues in Red Dead Redemption 2 when running in DirectX 12, freezes in Horizon Forbidden West after loading saves, track corruption in Forza Motorsport during benchmark or night races, light flickering in Forza Horizon 5 at night, and crashes in Dead Island 2 that appeared after the main 576.02 driver release were all addressed.
Display-related anomalies also received attention, including fixes for flickering background textures in the Resident Evil 4 Remake and momentary screen flickers when utilizing DisplayPort 2.1 at high refresh rates. Furthermore, the driver sought to resolve issues where certain LG UltraGear monitors (specifically models 27GX790A, 45GX950A, 32GX870A, 40WT95UF, and 27G850A) failed to wake from standby correctly when using DisplayPort 2.1 with HDR enabled, along with grey screen crashes reported in multi-monitor setups on RTX 50 hardware.
The hotfix built upon the immediately preceding 576.15 release, which had addressed separate issues like incorrect GPU temperature reporting after sleep, low idle clock speeds, shader compilation crashes, and SteamVR micro-stuttering.
Context of a Rapidly Evolving Platform
The release of Hotfix 576.26 occurred shortly after the mid-April 2025 launch of Nvidia’s mainstream RTX 5060 Ti , which joined the higher-end RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, and 5070 models introduced starting in January 2025 following the initial debut at CES 2025.
The relatively high frequency of these optional, manually downloaded hotfix drivers, compared to previous Nvidia GPU generations, suggested the company was actively working through initial stability hurdles with the Blackwell architecture and its accompanying software stack (driver branch 572.xx onwards).
Some widespread issues reported by users were linked to multi-monitor configurations, G-Sync behavior, and artifacts related to the new DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation feature – a technique that uses AI to insert additional frames to boost perceived performance.
While Nvidia addressed many problems through the main 576.02 Game Ready driver released mid-April, user reports indicated not all issues were resolved, necessitating the subsequent hotfixes. The situation led some users with older Nvidia cards (RTX 30/40 series) experiencing instability on the newer driver branches to revert to older, pre-RTX 50 drivers for stability, although this wasn’t an option for RTX 50 owners.
Hardware Context and Lingering Questions
The RTX 50-series, including the 5060 Ti and the later-released 5060, is built on the Blackwell architecture, utilizing the TSMC 4N process node also used for the RTX 40-series. Architectural enhancements include updated Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), 5th Gen Tensor Cores with FP4 support for AI, and 4th Gen RT Cores.
Key features promoted for the generation include DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation, the AI-based Smooth Motion AI (AI frame interpolation for games without native support), and Reflex 2 with Frame Warp (predictive rendering for lower latency). Nvidia also enabled user-controlled DLSS Overrides via its app in January 2025, and the DLSS update (Preset K) promised “improved temporal stability, reduced ghosting, and enhanced detail in motion.”
The RTX 5060 Ti specifically uses the GB206-300-A1 chip with 4,608 CUDA cores and connects via a PCIe 5.0 x8 interface – Peripheral Component Interconnect Express 5.0 operating with 8 data lanes, generally sufficient bandwidth for this GPU tier. It has a Total Graphics Power (TGP) – the card’s expected maximum power draw – of 180W, and some partner models use a standard 8-pin PCIe power connector, simplifying builds.
It launched with both 16GB and 8GB GDDR7 variants ($429 and $379 respectively), while the subsequent RTX 5060 ($299) featured 8GB GDDR7 and a 145W TGP. Both support DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20.
While Nvidia claimed significant performance increases with AI features enabled, independent reviews generally pegged the traditional rasterization uplift of the 16GB 5060 Ti at around 20% over the RTX 4060 Ti.
Despite the relatively small $50 price gap making the 16GB model appealing, launch availability at MSRP was challenging, reflecting broader supply constraints Nvidia acknowledged it was working to address across the RTX 50 line.
