- Nvidia’s 595.71 driver broke overclocking for graphics card users
- The driver was limiting GPU voltages, leading to underperformance
- Nvidia has just released a patch that fixes the problem
Normally, powering up your graphics card requires a lot of tinkering, benchmarking, and careful tuning to get everything just right. This isn’t something that’s forced on you or happens unexpectedly, but it seems to be exactly what happened to many Nvidia customers who upgraded some of the top GPUs to the company’s 595.71 driver. Fortunately, while this impacted actual gaming performance, a fix is now available.
The issue was reported by VideoCardz, with the outlet noting that early feedback from the 595.71 driver included reports of “changes in base voltage and boost behavior, with many claiming a ceiling around 0.95 to 0.975 V and clocks stopping around 2,955 to 2,985 MHz, or around 3,000 MHz, even after applying manual overclocks.”
In other words, users’ overclocking capabilities seemed limited by the software update. This was apparently not visible until customers installed the 595.71 driver. Although the issue does not appear to be limited to any one graphics card in particular, it appears to only affect those in the RTX 50 series.
Users were not happy. On Nvidia’s official support forums, for example, user bloodknight2012 said his custom overclock was “totally destroyed” by the driver. Forums were filled with similar comments from unhappy customers, suggesting the problem may be widespread.
At the time, it was unclear whether this was a bug or a deliberate decision by Nvidia. If it was the latter, there was speculation that this might have been done to avoid the kind of overheating issues that have plagued high-end Nvidia graphics cards in recent years.
Yet the absence of any mention of enforced undervolting in the 595.71 driver release notes suggested that this was not something Nvidia was aware of. And with the release of a fix in the latest patch 595.76, it seems clear that the problem was a bug all along.
A fix is available
Nvidia users have had to deal with more than their fair share of driver issues over the past few months, with huge piles of bug fixes released and repeated updates failing to fix the underlying issues. The situation got so bad that we were terrified to install the drivers on our own machines in case something went wrong.
According to an article posted on Nvidia’s support website, patch 595.76 fixes a number of issues. More importantly for those affected by the undervolting bug, Nvidia claims that the patch fixes the following issue: “When the graphics card is overclocked, the GPU voltage may be capped, preventing it from reaching expected levels.” With patch 595.76, this should no longer be a concern.
Additionally, this update fixes bright white dots that appear in Resident Evil Requiem when subsurface broadcast is enabled, improves path tracing performance in Resident Evil Requiemand resolves client crashes in Star Citizenamong other fixes.
So if you find that your Nvidia graphics card is underperforming since you installed the 595.71 driver, you’ll want to install this update to fix things.
You can also check out our guide on rolling back your GPU driver in case you encounter other bugs in the future. Sometimes going back and waiting for a fix is all you can do.
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