Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opens its campaign early access on October 16 for pre-order customers, a full week before the game launches on October 23. NVIDIA has already shipped the driver for it. GeForce Game Ready 617.42 WHQL is out now through the NVIDIA app and NVIDIA's website, with optimizations for Modern Warfare 4 and four other October releases.

The more useful detail for anyone planning to play is that "DLSS 4.5 support" doesn't mean the same thing on every RTX card. What you get depends on which generation sits in your PC.

What each RTX generation actually gets in Modern Warfare 4

NVIDIA's breakdown for the game sorts features into three tiers:

  • Every GeForce RTX card gets DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution in all modes, plus NVIDIA Reflex for lower PC latency.
  • RTX 40 Series cards add DLSS 4.5 Frame Generation on top of that.
  • RTX 50 Series cards unlock Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, which NVIDIA says scales up to 6X frame multiplication.

NVIDIA pitches the RTX 50 Series tier as the way to keep frame rates high with the game's optional ray-traced reflections switched on. That framing is worth reading carefully. Frame generation raises the number on the FPS counter by inserting generated frames, which is not the same as the game simulating more frames. Reflex exists partly to offset the added latency. For a competitive shooter, players on RTX 20 and 30 Series cards will be running Super Resolution and Reflex only, which is arguably the cleaner setup for multiplayer anyway.

NVIDIA has published a dedicated article on its GeForce site covering the early access details, and Activision's own PC tech specs post for the game is linked from it.

Driver 617.42 covers more than Call of Duty

The same driver carries optimizations for Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 7, STAR WARS: Galactic Racer and Valor Mortis. Several of those are tied to dated releases this month:

  • STAR WARS: Galactic Racer launched October 6 with DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and Super Resolution, plus ray-traced Lumen lighting cleaned up by DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction.
  • Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival arrives October 8 with DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation. Players can push newer DLSS models through the NVIDIA app override, including Dynamic Frame Generation up to 6X.
  • Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, the paid expansion, lands October 9 and upgrades the game's existing DLSS support to DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation.
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 7 follows on October 13 as a free update, adding National Championship Air Races and moving the sim to DLSS 4.5 with Multi Frame Generation and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation up to 6X.

Gears of War: E-Day and the 7.5X claim

Gears of War: E-Day, the prequel set 14 years before the original game, is also out now with DLSS 4.5, RTX Mega Geometry and hardware ray tracing. NVIDIA reports an average 7.5X performance increase at 4K over native rendering with 6X Multi Frame Generation and Ultra ray tracing enabled.

That number is NVIDIA's own measurement, and it stacks upscaling and generated frames against native rendering with no upscaling at all. It shows how much headroom the RTX 50 Series feature set buys. It doesn't tell you how the game feels in hand at that setting, which is the part reviewers will need to test.

The rest of NVIDIA's October list

Rounding out the update: 007 First Light gets its free Extended Operations update with two new TacSim missions, New Game+, a harder "00" difficulty and photo mode, alongside existing path tracing and DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction support. DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is available now with DLSS Super Resolution using the second-generation transformer model. NVIDIA also released a settings guide video for the upcoming CONTROL Resonant covering its DLSS 4.5 and path tracing options.

For Modern Warfare 4 players, the practical step is simple. Install 617.42 before October 16, then check which of the three DLSS tiers your card falls into before chasing NVIDIA's headline frame-rate numbers.