I have to hand it to Crystal Dynamics, they said they would support the PC version of Rise of the Tomb Raider and support it they have.

The first optimization patch released a mere week ago and already there is a second one deployed on Steam that promises performance improvements, a fix to the ALT-TAB crash bug and more. Here's the full set of patch notes:

- Fixed Map sometimes not showing or showing the wrong region.

- Fixed ALT-TAB in combination with Exclusive Fullscreen occasionally hanging the game or entire system. (Steam Only)

- Fixed graphics glitches on NPC clothing on NVIDIA 6x0 and 7x0 hardware.

- Fixed rare crashes with a "DX11 Internal Heap" error.

- Added separate mouse sensitivity control for X and Y axis, allowing users to equalize sensitivity.

- Added option to reduce in-game camera shake, for users that prefer this.

- Added audio-cue for finding secrets in the relic viewer.

- Fixed game changing system screen saver settings for some users. (Steam Only)

- Added additional error handling and messaging in case the GPU driver is crashing or unresponsive.

- Various performance improvements for GPU-bound situations. CPU bound scenarios are not impacted.

- A variety of other smaller optimizations, bug-fixes, and tweaks. 

 

"While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on the old version we made a Beta available on Steam, Build 610.1, that can be used to switch back to the previous version.

We will keep monitoring for feedback and will release further patches as it seems required. We always welcome your feedback! "

I've highlighted what I believe are the most important parts of this update, even though the screen shaking one might be a minor quibble on my end. What isn't minor is the fix to ALT-TAB crashing while in fullscreen mode, an issue that far too many games leave unresolved these days. As for the performance improvements they seem to be hit or miss given that the reports are roughly split down the middle on whether the patch actually helps or not but I'd still say its well worth downloading just for the crash fixes alone.

However, while the update does bring with it some nifty stuff it also completely breaks the sensitivity settings if you use the inverted control scheme on a gamepad. If you do I'd recommend you stop the patch from downloading and play on the older version until this issue gets sorted out in a day or two.