Buggy NVIDIA driver 531.18 bloating some CPUs after gaming
The latest GeForce Game Ready Driver brought RTX Video Super Resolution at an unfortunate cost.
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What you need to know
PC gamers with an NVIDIA GeForce GPU may have noticed a subtle yet unfortunate spike in CPU usage after closing games if using the latest Game Ready driver released last week. Attempting to diagnose the exact issue in aReddit announcement thread, comments suspect a telemetry plugin as the culprit (NvGSTPlugin.dll). Still, NVIDIA hastagged it as an open issuewith ticket number 4007208 during a more thorough investigation.
Rumblings of a potential problem started appearing after the driver launch, but aTwitter post from Tom Warren, senior editor of The Verge, picked up extra awareness of the bug. So if your gaming PC has felt sluggish after a gaming session, you’re not alone. Replies on Twitter confirmed CPU usage climbing as high as +10%, bloating the Windows desktop and raising the overall power draw.
if you’re noticing high CPU usage from Nvidia’s latest drivers (531.18) you’re not alone. Seems to be a bug with the latest drivers where Nvidia container uses 10%+ CPU after logon or after closing games. Rolling back to previous drivers will fixMarch 6, 2023
Bugs have usually been resolved via a hotfix driver from NVIDIA or an entirely new release depending on the severity of the issue. For now, PC gamers on Windows could roll back to the previousGeForce Game Ready 528.49 driverand temporarily forfeit access toRTX Video Super Resolution. Using AI tech to upscale blocky videos is a nice luxury, but it’s hardly worth straining your processor after a gaming session.
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Ben is a Senior Editor at Windows Central, covering everything related to technology hardware and software. He regularly goes hands-on with the latest Windows laptops, components inside custom gaming desktops, and any accessory compatible with PC and Xbox. His lifelong obsession with dismantling gadgets to see how they work led him to pursue a career in tech-centric journalism after a decade of experience in electronics retail and tech support.
