Phantom Blade Zero Running Badly on Nvidia? S-GAME Says Roll Back to Driver 617.42
Some links in this guide are affiliate links - we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Phantom Blade Zero came out on October 28 and became one of the biggest launches of the year on Steam: an all-time peak of 823,104 players at once according to SteamCharts, an 88 on Metacritic, and English user reviews at 89% positive. Nvidia was ready for it. Its October 21 driver, 621.01, lists the game as Game Ready.
The developer does not want you on that driver. The fix is to go back one release, to 617.42.
What S-GAME said
The advice sits at the bottom of a long launch-day letter from S-GAME's creative director and CEO, Soulframe Liang, posted on the game's Steam news page on October 28. After the story of the studio, a short postscript lists three last-minute notes from the team. The third reads:
"We've observed some performance instability with NVIDIA's latest 621.01 driver. Based on our testing, version 617.42 currently offers the best experience in Phantom Blade Zero. If you've installed a driver newer than 617.42, we recommend rolling back to 617.42 and choosing the clean installation option. Please stay on this version until NVIDIA releases its next driver update, which we expect to arrive soon."
Wccftech and GameGPU picked it up the same day. Nobody has published measurements yet, and S-GAME has not said what "performance instability" looks like, which cards it hits, or how bad it gets. A studio telling players to skip the Game Ready driver for its own game is rare, though, and it would not do that over a rounding error.
"Soon" has not arrived. We checked Nvidia's driver lookup on November 2: the newest Game Ready driver is still 621.01, and the one below it is 617.42. The only newer build is hotfix 621.12 from October 27. It is built on 621.01, it was published to fix video black screens on some RTX 50 cards, and its notes do not mention Phantom Blade Zero. S-GAME's advice names 617.42, so that is the version to use.
Check which driver you are on
Open the Nvidia App and look at the Drivers tab, or right-click the desktop, open the Nvidia Control Panel, and click System Information at the bottom left. The driver version is on the first screen. If it says 621.01 or 621.12, the advice applies to you. If it says 617.42 or older, you are already where S-GAME wants you.
If the game already runs well for you on 621.01, you can stay put. The studio is describing what its testing found, not a crash that happens to everyone. But if you have stutter, uneven frame times or frame rate drops that patches and settings have not touched, the driver is the first thing to change, because the developer has already told you it is a problem.
Rolling back to 617.42
- Download 617.42 directly. For desktop cards it is on Nvidia's 617.42 page (about 990MB). Laptop GPUs use a different package: use the manual search on Nvidia's driver page, pick your notebook GPU, and choose 617.42 from the list of versions.
- Run the installer. Choose Custom (Advanced), then tick Perform a clean installation. That is the option S-GAME asked for, and it resets the driver's settings and profiles instead of layering the old version on top of the new one.
- Restart, then check the version again in the Nvidia App.
- Stop the newer driver from coming back. If the Nvidia App is set to download driver updates automatically, turn that off for now. When the next Game Ready driver appears, read its release notes before you install it.
You do not need Display Driver Uninstaller for this. The clean installation option covers it. If the rollback fails partway or you see display oddities afterwards, the DDU route in our 621.01 post is the fallback.
What you give up
617.42 has no Game Ready profile for Phantom Blade Zero, which sounds worse than it is: the studio tested on 617.42 and picked it anyway. The other loss is Advanced Shader Delivery, the 621.01 feature that installs precompiled shaders for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. If you play both games, MW4 will build its shaders on your PC again on 617.42, so expect a longer first load and some stutter in your first matches after each MW4 update. 617.42 was already Game Ready for MW4, so it runs fine otherwise.
The rest of the launch checklist
The driver is the only part of this that is unusual. These are the official requirements, and each one causes problems when it is missed:
- Install the day-one patch. It is about 5GB, and S-GAME says it "significantly improves ray tracing and path tracing performance" and fixes bugs. If you pre-loaded, Steam has to download it before your first launch; if you bought after launch, it came with the game.
- Use an SSD. Both requirement tiers say "SSD installation required." That is not boilerplate in a game this large.
- Free up the space. The game is about 145GB installed. During pre-load S-GAME asked for 300GB free, because the download and the unpacked game sit side by side until Steam finishes. If you are installing now and the drive is nearly full, clear room before blaming anything else for a stalled install.
- AMD and Intel cards: the warning is about Nvidia only. Keep your current driver.
The official hardware tiers, from the Steam store page:
| Tier | Target | CPU | GPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 1080p, 30 fps, upscaling on | Core i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600 | GTX 1660 6GB / RX 5500 XT 8GB | 16GB |
| Recommended | 1440p, 60 fps, upscaling on | Core i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X | RTX 3060 Ti 8GB / RX 6700 XT 12GB | 16GB |
Both tiers assume upscaling is on, so turn on DLSS, FSR or XeSS before judging performance. We have a Phantom Blade Zero profile in our FPS model, and it lands where S-GAME does: an RTX 3060 Ti with a Ryzen 5 5600X comes out at about 60 fps at 1440p on balanced settings. That is a model built from the spec sheet, not a benchmark, and we re-rate it when public benchmarks land. For your own CPU and GPU, the Phantom Blade Zero page runs the same model.
If the SSD line is the one you are short on, a 2TB Gen4 drive is the sensible size for a library that now has a 145GB game in it. The Crucial P310 2TB is the value pick in our NVMe guide, and loads games as fast as drives that cost more.
What we do not know
S-GAME has not described the symptoms, named affected cards, or said whether the problem is in Nvidia's driver or in how the game uses it. We have not seen a comment from Nvidia, and 621.01's release notes list no open issue for the game. Our view: if the game runs well on 621.01, leave it alone. If it does not, roll back to 617.42 before you try anything else, and move up again only when the next Game Ready driver's notes, or S-GAME, say the problem is fixed.
The short version
- Game: Phantom Blade Zero, out October 28, 2026 on Steam and Epic. All-time Steam peak 823,104 players (SteamCharts, November 2).
- Problem: S-GAME says Nvidia's 621.01 Game Ready driver gives "performance instability" in the game. The studio has not given details.
- Fix: roll back to GeForce 617.42 (October 6, 2026) with Custom, then Perform a clean installation, and stay on it until Nvidia's next Game Ready driver.
- Status, November 2: 621.01 is still Nvidia's newest Game Ready driver. Hotfix 621.12 is built on it and does not mention the game.
- Also needed: the 5GB day-one patch, an SSD, 145GB of space (300GB free during pre-load). AMD and Intel owners keep their drivers.
Related reading
- GeForce 621.01 black screens and the 621.12 hotfix, the other problem with this driver
- Modern Warfare 4 PC requirements, TPM and Secure Boot, if you play both
- AMD Adrenalin 26.10.1 known issues, for Radeon owners
Found this useful? Pass it along:
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Nvidia driver for Phantom Blade Zero?
617.42, according to the developer. On launch day S-GAME wrote that it had observed performance instability with Nvidia's 621.01 driver, that 617.42 currently offers the best experience in Phantom Blade Zero, and that players on anything newer should roll back to 617.42 with a clean installation and stay there until Nvidia's next driver.
Is 621.01 bad for Phantom Blade Zero even though it is the Game Ready driver?
S-GAME says it performs worse. Nvidia released 621.01 on October 21, 2026 with Phantom Blade Zero listed as one of its Game Ready titles, and a week later the studio told players to avoid it. S-GAME has not said what the instability looks like or which cards are affected, so it may not hit every system, but the studio's own testing is the best evidence available.
Does Nvidia's 621.12 hotfix fix Phantom Blade Zero?
Nothing says it does. 621.12, released October 27, is built on 621.01 and was published to fix video freezing and black screens on some RTX 50 cards. Its notes do not mention Phantom Blade Zero, and S-GAME's advice names 617.42, not the hotfix.
Do AMD or Intel GPU owners need to do anything?
No driver rollback. S-GAME's warning is about Nvidia's 621.01 only. Everyone still needs the roughly 5GB day-one patch installed before playing, an SSD, and 145GB of space for the game.
How much space does Phantom Blade Zero need?
145GB installed, on an SSD, which both of the official requirement tiers make mandatory. S-GAME asked pre-loading players to keep at least 300GB free during the pre-load itself, because the download and the unpacked game exist side by side for a while.
When should I go back to a newer Nvidia driver?
When Nvidia releases its next Game Ready driver after 621.01 and either its notes or S-GAME say Phantom Blade Zero is fixed. S-GAME said on October 28 that it expected that driver soon. As of November 2, 621.01 is still the newest Game Ready driver on Nvidia's site.