NVIDIA just pushed out the GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.36 update, bringing official support for the RTX 5070 Laptop GPU and DLSS 4.5 scaling in Conan Exiles Enhanced. The patch finally squashes some annoying visual glitches that have been plaguing God of War Ragnarok and Assassin's Creed Shadows players while also fixing H.264 playback artifacts and a Blender EEVEE material node bug. A clean installation is highly recommended before running the installer, since leftover shader caches often cause more headaches than they solve. Users should skip the automatic GeForce Experience background telemetry and let the setup finish without bundling unnecessary system utilities.
Update to GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.36 for Windows 10 and 11
NVIDIA just pushed out the GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.36 update, and it brings a few necessary fixes alongside support for newer hardware. The patch targets specific visual glitches in recent AAA titles while adding official compatibility for the RTX 5070 Laptop GPU. Users running Windows 10 or 11 should check their installation queue before rolling out this version to their rigs.
Why This GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.36 Update Matters
The Conan Exiles Enhanced support is the headline feature, but the real value sits in the bug fixes. Texture flashing in God of War Ragnarok and clothing flicker on Assassin’s Creed Shadows are exactly the kind of issues that make people roll back drivers out of frustration. Those problems usually stem from how the GPU handles memory allocation during heavy shader compilation. This update patches those rendering paths so the frame pacing stays smooth instead of stuttering through visual artifacts. The H.264 playback fix also matters more than it looks. Blocky DXVA 2.0 decoding errors tend to show up when hardware acceleration gets out of sync with Windows media pipelines, and fixing that prevents unnecessary CPU spikes during video streaming or local file playback. Users often see this happen after a bad driver update leaves stale cache files behind, so the clean install step is not just optional advice.
Hardware Support and Blender Quirks
Official support for the RTX 5070 Laptop GPU means laptop manufacturers can finally ship optimized profiles without relying on beta builds. The 12GB VRAM configuration handles modern ray tracing workloads better than older mobile chips, but it still needs proper driver calibration to avoid thermal throttling under sustained loads. Blender users will appreciate the EEVEE material output fix as well. Black zero value nodes used to break node trees in version 5.0.1, which forced artists to rebuild materials from scratch or switch to Cycles for quick previews. That workaround is gone now, so rendering pipelines stay intact without manual node patching. GeForce Experience will try to auto install this update anyway, but letting it run silently often skips the clean installation prompt that actually prevents shader cache conflicts. The background telemetry and optional bundled software are pure bloat that most power users disable immediately after setup.
Installation and Rollback Notes
Running the installer over an existing driver usually works fine, but leftover registry keys from previous beta versions often cause conflicts. A clean installation clears out stale shader caches that sometimes trigger the very flickering issues this update claims to fix. The NVIDIA Control Panel will prompt for a fresh setup if users select custom installation and check perform a clean install option. Skipping that step leaves behind orphaned files that can interfere with DLSS 4.5 scaling in Conan Exiles Enhanced. Users who prefer automatic updates should verify the driver version matches exactly before letting Windows Update or GeForce Experience push it out, since mismatched builds sometimes skip critical hotfixes. Rolling back to a previous stable release remains straightforward if any new title starts crashing after installation.
GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.36
Driver Version: 596.36 | WHQL Release Date: Tue Apr 28, 2026 Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit,
Windows 11Language: English (US) File Size: 958.86 MB
Keep an eye on performance benchmarks after installing, and roll back if any specific title starts acting up. The patch holds together well for most setups, but hardware quirks always exist. Enjoy the smoother frames and stable decoding.
