Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.71 has proven to be a double-edged sword for graphics cards, fixing issues from the previous driver while unfortunately introducing new problems. This time, it turns out this latest driver version is curiously stifling GPU voltage, and consequently keeping clock frequencies below expectations.
For those out of the loop, Nvidia published GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.59 on 26 February, before pulling it from its site just a few hours later. The GPU manufacturer claimed to have discovered a bug in the driver, following user reports that the software was causing stability issues, among other problems relating to fan detection and HDR content.
Rather than deploy a hotfix, as per prior instances of driver issues, Nvidia published 595.71 on 2 March, complete with WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Lab) certification. Since installing the driver, the fan issues have disappeared, but users have noticed performance issues stemming from erroneous changes to voltage behaviours.
YouTuber Bang4BuckPC Gamer succinctly demonstrates this problem in the video above, using Heaven benchmark and a TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 OC, a graphics card with a 173MHz factory overclock to 2580MHz. However, GPU frequencies naturally climb much higher than this figure when thermal and power limits allow.
At stock values, the GPU’s core frequency and voltage behave as expected, with a 150MHz overclock also proving unproblematic. However, attempting to go further, in this case +300MHz, results in the voltage inexplicably dropping from ~1.05V to 0.99V, with no way to achieve 3GHz.
The Nvidia GeForce forum thread for driver 595.59 is filling up with reports of similar behaviours. This issue and others aren’t exclusive to the best GPUs in the RTX 50 series either, with some RTX 40 series owners joining the chorus of complaints.
Nvidia has remained silent on problems stemming from 595.59 since its publication. Hopefully, the company can provide a hotfix in the near future, as waiting the usual fortnight for a new driver version seems unreasonable. At the very least, graphics card owners have the option of rolling back to older drivers in the meantime.
