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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 · PC (NVIDIA) · version Early access (DMZ), NVIDIA driver 621.01

Washed-out and purple-tinted graphics after NVIDIA driver 621.01

ConfirmedUnpatched

Updated

Since NVIDIA's 621.01 driver, some PC players see washed-out, pixelated, posterized or purple and green-tinted lighting and shadows in DMZ and Multiplayer, while Campaign can look normal. On October 26 Infinity Ward's Trello board listed the 621.01 visual issues as under investigation and said it is working with NVIDIA to correct them. Two workarounds: a clean installation of an earlier NVIDIA driver (players name 617.42, 617.14 and 616.56), which Call of Duty staff called a temporary workaround for most players; and, unconfirmed, deleting the shadercache folders inside the game's cod26 and sp26 folders and letting shaders rebuild, which several players on X said fixed it. Players report that turning HDR off, a clean reinstall of 621.01, and reloading or restarting shader preloading did not help.

Lifecycle

Acknowledged · stage 3 of 5

8days open

Since first report

  1. Reported (reached)
  2. Confirmed (reached)—
  3. Acknowledged (reached) · now
  4. Partial (not yet)next
  5. Patched (not yet)—
Report → ack 5dIn current stage 3d
Workaround available
Game
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
Platform
PC (NVIDIA)
Affected version
Early access (DMZ), NVIDIA driver 621.01
Kind
Bug
Confirmation
Confirmed
Patch status
Unpatched
First reported
Last updated
Latest fix or workaround
Workaround, : Oct 29: a player says deleting the shader cache in the cod26 folder fixed the same problem for them; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver. Source
How we label issues

Kind

  • Exploit: Repeatable and clearly advantageous to the player using it; essentially cheating.
  • Bug: Everything else: crashes, launch errors, broken features, visual or audio faults.

Confirmation

  • Confirmed: A developer or official account acknowledged it, an official known-issues board lists it, it appears in official patch notes, or 100+ corroborating posts on X were actually counted.
  • Unconfirmed: None of the above yet. Press articles are reports and never confirm an issue on their own.

Patch status

  • Unpatched: Known and open; no fix has been claimed.
  • Reported as unpatched: Players credibly report it persisting, including after a fix claim that never appeared in patch notes.
  • Partially patched: Official patch notes list a fix, but credible later reports say it still happens, or the notes only cover part of it.
  • Reported as patched: A developer, official account or player says it is fixed, but no official patch notes list it.
  • Patched: Official patch notes (a Steam news post or the publisher's patch notes page) list the fix, and nothing credible says it still happens.

Active means still affecting players: Unpatched, Reported as unpatched or Partially patched. Patched and Reported as patched issues are closed.

Estimated impact runs from 0.1 to 9.9 with one decimal. xploitr sets it from the rubric below. Factors: advantage to other players, reach, play blocked or progress lost, frequency, and whether a reliable workaround exists. Patched issues keep their historical impact.

Signed-in community members can report new issues and suggest status changes, such as Fixed or Still unpatched, with their platform, version and a source. Every report and suggestion is reviewed by an editor before anything on the record changes. A new issue is published only when the report has at least three independent sources (distinct accounts, or distinct sites for web pages, after blocked sources are removed), unless the owner approved that issue by hand. Approved input appears as a dated Update from the xploitr community source on the issue's timeline, credited to the member's username (reports can opt out and stay anonymous); nothing is counted or published automatically.

Impact bands

  • 0.1–2.9 Low: Cosmetic, audio, text and UI glitches with no effect on play.
  • 3.0–4.9 Moderate: Narrow gameplay bugs or small exploits, rare or with a workaround.
  • 5.0–6.9 Elevated: Bugs most players in a mode notice: hit registration, desync, balance-breaking damage.
  • 7.0–8.4 High: Widely abused competitive or economy exploits; crashes many players hit.
  • 8.5–9.9 Severe: Launch blockers, widespread progress or item loss, exploits that break the game for everyone.

Each issue has a dated timeline of updates (report, acknowledgement, announcement, fix, workaround). Update summaries are our own words; quotes and excerpts are the source's words, or our English translation when marked.

Estimated impactEstimated impact 7.7 out of 9.9, HighOur estimate from how many players it reaches and what it costs them.

Updates · 27

Show all 27 updates
  1. Report

    Oct 29: a player's graphics broke overnight; restarting the PC and reloading shaders did not help. The post does not name the driver.

    @ItsVarics on X ·

    @ItsVarics on X · · View post

  2. Report

    Oct 29: a player on an RTX 4080 Super with the latest driver says restarting shader preloading did not fix it.

    Pun1sher · Steam · Forum reply ·
    “Yes. I got the same issue today. I have 4080 Super with the latest version. I had restarted shader preloading and it didn't work.”
    Pun1sher · Steam · Forum reply · Open source
  3. Workaround

    Oct 29: a player says emptying the shadercache folders in cod26 and sp26 and rebuilding shaders fixed their blurry graphics; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver.

    @iiTzPredatorHD on X ·

    @iiTzPredatorHD on X · · View post

  4. Workaround

    Oct 29: a player says deleting the shadercache folders in cod26 and sp26 and letting shaders regenerate fixed the same graphics glitch for them; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver.

    @TheDPrime on X ·

    @TheDPrime on X · · View post

  5. Workaround

    Oct 29: a player says deleting the shader cache in the cod26 folder fixed the same problem for them; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver.

    @NdEtherious on X ·

    @NdEtherious on X · · View post

Sources · 271 Official1 Developer25 CommunityInfinity Ward (Trello) · TrelloOfficial+ 25 similar community reports and 1 official postHide
Infinity Ward (Trello)OfficialTrello
“PC users having updated their NVIDIA driver version to 621.01 may experience visual issues under some circumstances. We are working with NVIDIA to correct this.”
  • CallofDutyCMSteam · Forum replyDeveloperOpen
    “Hi. This should indeed work as a temporary workaround for most players. We are working with NVIDIA to correct these issues in an upcoming update.”
  • @KaiserTWView post
    “The NVIDIA Driver update from yesterday will sometime break MW4 graphics :)”
  • @WelkramTVView post
    “If your MW4 is looking washed out after installing the 621.01 NVIDIA Graphics Driver, your hardware is NOT failing, do not panic. There’s a current issue regarding the latest available driver and players should revert back to 617.42 until a patch is announced. 🫡 #MW4”
  • @codeTMLView post
    “i update my graphics drivers to 621.01 and now mw4 looks like im on mushrooms ?? hello”
  • MohammedSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “HDR disabled”
  • LoomiiSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “I have been playing campaign and have had no issues with lighting, shaders, graphics, etc. However, I tried DMZ today and noticed that the sky and overall graphics are very buggy with purple/green effects over almost everything. I have the latest Nvidia drivers and I am not experiencing anything …”
  • HeathCliffSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I have the exact same issue. Played ten hours of campaign/DMZ and then loading in just now the lighting and shadows of DMZ are totally borked. I also installed the latest NVIDIA drivers but the game looked fine my first time playing after installing the driver. This issue happened after that. No …”
  • WhoflungpooSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “everything looks like water paint, saw a lot of others had same issues, how do i fix it anyone know how? i reinstalled driver and did nothing”
  • ashhSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “Why does my game look like it has a posterization effect? I've never seen such a bug. Game not letting me reset shaders, graphics card up to date...”
  • leviathenSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “Im having a weird issue. Campaign looks great, but multiplayer looks horrible. Something is wrong. It didnt look like this on the beta at all. I cant quite explain the way it looks, like its glitched....Any ideas or is anyone else having this issue?”
  • MeechalSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I have discoloration that suddenly happened after the game crashed.”
  • InosukeSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “mines like this too”
  • Community reportSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “So my game looks weird with a lot of colour distortion and pixelation in both games and the menu. Running a fairly new PC with a 4070. Have used both recommended settings, and lowest settings…”
  • Community reportSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I ran into this problem today after a small game update — yesterday everything was fine.”
  • @ItsVaricsView post

    Oct 29: a player's graphics broke overnight; restarting the PC and reloading shaders did not help. The post does not name the driver. (Our summary of this post, not the author’s words.)

  • Pun1sherSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “Yes. I got the same issue today. I have 4080 Super with the latest version. I had restarted shader preloading and it didn't work.”
  • roorback++Steam · Forum replyOpen
    “nvidia, newest drivers (from yesterrday?) Same here... I rolled back the driver on devicemanager, nvidia, settings, old driver - then it worked”
  • MorsEgoSumSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I spent 30 minutes trying to fix this, I reloaded the shaders and that didn't do anything. Rolling back the driver worked.”
  • SemSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “Updating here. Reverted Nvidia drivers to 617.14 version, no further weird color issues. Probably will get a driver update in the next few days to address.”
  • leviathenSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I fixed it, my issue was the newest driver from Nividia. I took it back to the last version and it's fine now!”
  • IremongerSteam · Forum threadOpen
    “If anyone is having issues with the color saturation, it is due to the newest Nvidia driver. Roll back to previous version 617.42.”
  • TaquitoSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “Same issue here on an RTX 4070 Ti: blotchy, posterized colors with banding in the sky, shadows and skin. Turning HDR off didn't help, and neither did a clean reinstall of the latest driver. What fixed it: rolling back the NVIDIA driver from 621.01 (released Oct 18) to 616.56, which is the version …”
  • Community reportSteam · Forum replyOpen
    “I think this is an issue with the latest nvidia drivers (621.01). When I rolled back to 617.42, it fixed the colour issues.”
  • @iiTzPredatorHDView post

    Oct 29: a player says emptying the shadercache folders in cod26 and sp26 and rebuilding shaders fixed their blurry graphics; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver. (Our summary of this post, not the author’s words.)

  • @TheDPrimeView post

    Oct 29: a player says deleting the shadercache folders in cod26 and sp26 and letting shaders regenerate fixed the same graphics glitch for them; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver. (Our summary of this post, not the author’s words.)

  • @NdEtheriousView post

    Oct 29: a player says deleting the shader cache in the cod26 folder fixed the same problem for them; unconfirmed, and the post does not name the driver. (Our summary of this post, not the author’s words.)

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