NVIDIA has pushed out version 11.0.8 of its desktop companion app, and the headliner is a feature competitive gamers have been requesting for years: ShadowPlay recording at 240 frames per second. Available now for GeForce RTX 40- and RTX 50-series cards, the update finally brings a beta-era capture option into the mainstream release. But the ability to grab silky-smooth 4K footage at double or quadruple conventional frame rates comes with a hardware asterisk — your GPU’s video encoders determine what you actually get.

The update also expands DLSS Override to 17 more titles, tweaks multi-monitor NVIDIA Surround behavior, and stamps out a ShadowPlay bug that broke recording for games with special characters in their names. It’s a mixed bag of features that collectively sharpen the NVIDIA App’s value proposition against the legacy GeForce Experience it’s been gradually replacing.

What’s Actually New in 11.0.8

At the center of the release is the 240 FPS ShadowPlay mode. In the overlay (Alt+Z), the Video Capture settings now offer a 240 FPS option alongside the usual 30 and 60 FPS presets. But not all RTX cards are created equal. GPUs with dual NVENC encoders — that’s virtually the entire RTX 40- and RTX 50-series lineup, including mid-range models like the RTX 4060 — can record at up to 4K resolution at 240 FPS. Cards that ship with a single NVENC encoder (some lower-end models or older architectures) are limited to 1440p at 240 FPS. NVIDIA hasn’t published an exhaustive per-model list, but the rule of thumb is: if it’s RTX 40 or 50, you probably have dual encoders; if it’s older, you might be capped. The feature currently relies on the NVENC hardware path, so software-based encoding at 240 FPS isn’t on the table — and wouldn’t make much sense given the performance hit.

Beyond the marquee capture upgrade, the app gains two NVIDIA Surround controls aimed at multi-monitor desktop users. Under System > Displays > Surround, you’ll find toggles to:

  • Keep the Windows taskbar on only one display, even when Surround spans three panels.
  • Maximize windows across all connected Surround displays, rather than having apps snap to just one screen.

These are subtle quality-of-life fixes that address long-standing complaints from sim-racing, flight-sim, and productivity power users who want a unified monitor canvas but not a UI that stretches across 48:9 aspect ratios.

DLSS Override support grows to 17 additional titles, including Active Matter, INDUSTRIA 2, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, Neverness to Everness, PRAGMATA, Screamer, Sudden Strike 5, Twinmotion, and Windrose. The app’s optimal-settings profiles also add presets for Crimson Desert, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Marathon, Nioh 3, Resident Evil Requiem, and The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin. Lastly, a bug that caused ShadowPlay to fail silently on games whose titles contained special characters — ampersands, apostrophes, accent marks, and the like — has been fixed, which may be the most immediately welcome change for users who’ve been scratching their heads over missing recordings.

What It Means for You

For competitive players and content creators, 240 FPS capture is a genuine leap. Recording at four times the frame rate of traditional 60 FPS video opens up new possibilities in post-production: frame-by-frame analysis of flick shots, ultra-smooth slow motion (playback at 60 FPS gives 4× slowdown with no frame duplication), or simply preserving the full fluidity of a 240 Hz monitor in your VODs. The file sizes, however, are commensurate. A 4K 240 FPS recording can easily consume over 10 GB per minute in high-bitrate H.264 or HEVC, so you’ll need fast NVMe storage and ample capacity. If you’re still running SATA SSDs or — heaven forbid — a spinning hard drive, expect dropped frames or outright recording failures.

The dual vs. single encoder limitation is the key detail to check before you start dreaming of 4K 240 FPS highlight reels. If you own a budget RTX 40-series card like the RTX 4050 (if it ever materializes) or an older RTX 30-series GPU, you may find 1440p 240 FPS is your ceiling. That’s still a massive upgrade over 60 FPS, but the difference is worth confirming in the overlay’s recording settings after updating.

For multi-monitor users, the Surround improvements will matter if you run three displays in NVIDIA Surround. Previously, Windows would place the taskbar across all three screens, and maximizing a window meant filling the entire 5760×1080 space — often requiring manual resizing. The new options let you reclaim a normal desktop on one display while still having Surround active for full-screen games. It’s a small touch that fixes friction for those who game on a triple-monitor setup but also use the PC for everyday work.

The DLSS Override expansion is less exciting for everyday users, as it only matters if you own one of those 17 games and want to force a specific DLSS preset. Still, for enthusiasts who micromanage their upscaling settings, having in-app control is more convenient than third-party tools.

For Windows sysadmins or IT professionals managing fleets of workstations, this release carries no direct administrative impact. The NVIDIA App is per-user and doesn’t require elevated privileges to update. However, the larger ShadowPlay files might strain network shares or backup windows if users start archiving 240 FPS recordings on enterprise storage — a fringe scenario but worth a footnote.

How We Got Here

ShadowPlay’s journey from a hardware-accelerated recording novelty to a 240 FPS powerhouse traces back to 2013, when NVIDIA first introduced it as a GeForce Experience feature. Back then, 60 FPS at 1080p was the ceiling, leveraging the Kepler architecture’s built-in H.264 encoder. With Maxwell in 2014 came 4K 60 FPS recording, and the feature was rebranded as the Share Overlay in 2016 with GeForce Experience 3.0. The underlying NVENC block saw generational improvements — Turing added HEVC encoding, Ampere refined quality and efficiency — but the frame rate ceiling remained stuck at 60 FPS for the mainstream release, even as monitor refresh rates climbed to 120, 144, and then 240 Hz.

In beta builds of the NVIDIA App (and earlier GeForce Experience betas), a 120 FPS capture option occasionally appeared, but it was inconsistent and often tied to specific driver branches. The RTX 40-series “Ada Lovelace” cards introduced dual NVENC encoders, which theoretically enabled higher throughput, but the software didn’t fully exploit them until now. RTX 50-series “Blackwell” GPUs carry forward that dual-encoder design, cementing 4K 240 FPS as the new halo feature.

This release also underscores NVIDIA’s ongoing migration from the aging GeForce Experience client to the unified NVIDIA App, which now handles driver updates, game optimization, ShadowPlay, and DLSS tweaks in a single interface. The app launched in early 2024 and has been steadily absorbing features that previously required separate downloads (like NVIDIA Broadcast) or manual configuration. Version 11.0.8 marks a significant milestone in that consolidation by bringing a long-requested performance mode into the stable channel.

What to Do Now

If you own an RTX 40- or RTX 50-series GPU, here’s your action plan:

  1. Update the NVIDIA App. Open the app, click the gear icon, and check for updates. If automatic updates are enabled, you may already be on 11.0.8. If you haven’t yet switched from GeForce Experience, now’s a good time — the NVIDIA App can import your settings.
  2. Check your recording capabilities. Press Alt+Z, go to Settings > Video Capture. If you see 240 FPS as an option at 4K, your GPU has dual NVENC encoders. If 1440p 240 FPS is the max, it’s a single-encoder model.
  3. Assess your storage. 4K 240 FPS recording at typical NVENC bitrates (say, 100 Mbps) will eat roughly 750 MB per minute. A 10-minute session could balloon to 7.5 GB, and a 1 TB drive would fill up after about 22 hours of capture. Consider recording to a dedicated high-speed NVMe drive with at least 200 GB free. For reliable sustained writes, avoid QLC-based SSDs with small SLC caches unless they’re expressly rated for high-write workloads.
  4. Enable the special character bug fix. No action needed — the fix is baked in. But if you previously lost recordings in games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (notably containing a colon), you should now be fine.
  5. Explore Surround tweaks. If you use NVIDIA Surround, dive into System > Displays > Surround and set your taskbar and maximize preferences to your liking.

For RTX 30-series and older GPU owners, 240 FPS recording isn’t officially available as of this release. NVIDIA hasn’t commented on whether older dual-NVENC cards (like the RTX 3090, which also has dual encoders) will gain support later. The feature list explicitly names only RTX 40 and 50, so if you’re still on an Ampere-era flagship, you’re out of luck for now.

Outlook

The NVIDIA App is quickly becoming the central nervous system for GeForce users, and 240 FPS ShadowPlay is a clear statement that the company intends to differentiate its software stack as much as its hardware. We should expect future updates to refine the feature — custom bitrate controls, HDR-aware capture, and perhaps AV1 encoding on RTX 50 cards could give content creators even more flexibility. Multi-monitor refinements and broader DLSS Override adoption will continue to pad release notes. And while there’s no official word, the enthusiast community will be watching to see if dual-NVENC RTX 30 cards eventually get the 240 FPS treatment. For now, if you’re on an Ada Lovelace or Blackwell GPU, press Alt+Z and start recording — your footage just got a whole lot smoother.