Nvidia has managed to ship a driver that fixes one mess while apparently creating another.
A few days ago, Nvidia pushed out GeForce Game Ready driver v595.59, pitched as the tuned release for Resident Evil Requiem with extra fixes, then it promptly went sideways.
Users reported fan control going wonky, clock speeds getting kneecapped, and game performance dropping hard compared with earlier drivers.
Our writer Sebastian Castellanos saw Resident Evil Requiem crawl, and rolling back through several older versions delivered 68 per cent higher performance.
Nvidia yanked v595.59 from its download page, told people to roll back to v591.86 WHQL and started doing damage control.
“February 26th, 11 am PT Update: We have discovered a bug in the Game Ready and Studio 595.59 WHQL drivers and have removed the downloads temporarily while our team investigates. For users who have already installed this driver and are experiencing issues with fan control, please roll back to 591.86 WHQL,” a press release said.
Then came the follow-up driver, v595.71 WHQL, with Nvidia insisting that the earlier issues had been sorted.
“March 2nd, 6am PT Update: We have resolved the aforementioned issues and released a new version of the Resident Evil Requiem Game Ready Driver, which you can download from the NVIDIA app or GeForce.com.”
Except now there is chatter that v595.71 is virtually limiting voltages on RTX 50 “Blackwell” cards, which is not the sort of surprise anyone wants after a rollback weekend.
YouTube tech channel Bang4BuckPC Gamer first flagged it, claiming an RTX 5090 now sits below 3GHz and dips under 1V, where it previously ran more than 1V and more than 3GHz in 3D workloads.
The report says the effect shows up with overclocking, suggesting an artificial ceiling has been bolted on.
Tests on an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 SUPRIM X using FurMark reportedly show a drop from roughly 1.020 to 1.030V at 3015 to 3030MHz on v591.86, to about 1.005 to 1.010V and sub-3GHz on v595.71 with the same settings.
Those settings included a +200 MHz core offset, a +2000 MHz memory offset, and the core voltage slider set to 100 per cent, which is exactly the sort of tinkering this kind of clamp would annoy.
No one is claiming a clear gaming hit this time, but it looks like bad news for anyone chasing headroom, especially if Nvidia is doing it to calm fears around 16-pin connector dramas.
