- Nvidia’s 595.71 driver broke overclocking for graphics card users
- Driver limited GPU voltages, resulting in lower performance
- Nvidia just released a hotfix that fixes the problem
Normally, lowering the voltage on your graphics card requires a lot of tinkering, benchmarking, and careful adjustments to get everything right. It’s not something that is forced on you or that comes up unexpectedly, however, that seems to be exactly what happened to many Nvidia customers who upgraded some of the best GPUs to the company’s 595.71 driver. Fortunately, although it had an impact on real-world gaming performance, a solution is now available.
The issue was reported by VideoCardz, with the outlet noting that early feedback for the 595.71 driver had included reports of “core voltage and boost behavior changes, with many claiming a ceiling of around 0.95 to 0.975V and clocks stopping around 2955 to 2985 MHz, or around 3000 MHz, even after applying manual overclocks.”
In other words, users’ overclocking capabilities seemed to be limited by the software update. This was apparently not evident before customers installed the 595.71 driver. While the issue did not appear to be limited to one particular graphics card, it only seemed to affect those in the RTX 50 series.
Users were not happy. On the official Nvidia support forums, for example, user bloodknight2012 said that his custom overclock was “totally ruined” by the driver. Forums were filled with similar comments from disgruntled customers, suggesting the problem may have been widespread.
At the time, it was unclear whether this was a mistake or a deliberate decision by Nvidia. If it were the latter, there was speculation that it could have been done to avoid the kind of overheating issues that have plagued high-end Nvidia graphics cards in recent years.
However, the absence of any mention of imposed undervolting in the release notes for the 595.71 driver hinted that it wasn’t something Nvidia was aware of. And with the release of a patch in the latest revision 595.76, it seems clear that the problem was a bug from the beginning.
There is a solution available
Nvidia users have had to endure more than their share of driver issues in recent months, with massive amounts of bug fixes and repeated updates failing to fix the underlying problems. It got so bad that we were afraid to install drivers on our own machines in case something went wrong.
According to a post on Nvidia’s support website, hotfix 595.76 fixes a number of issues. Most importantly for people affected by the undervoltage bug, Nvidia says the hotfix fixes the following issue: “When the graphics card is overclocked, the GPU voltage may be limited, preventing it from rising to expected levels.” With the 595.76 revision, that should no longer be a concern.
Additionally, this update fixes bright white dots that appear on Resident Evil Requiem When subsurface scattering is enabled, it improves route tracking performance in Resident Evil Requiemand resolve customer failures Star Citizenamong other corrections.
So, if you find that your Nvidia graphics card has been performing poorly since installing the 595.71 driver, you’ll want to install this update to fix things.
You may also want to check out our guide on how to roll back your GPU driver in case you experience other errors in the future. Sometimes all you can do is stand back and wait for a review.
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