NVIDIA’s Latest Driver May Limit Voltage on RTX 50 GPUs

NVIDIA’s latest driver release may impact voltage, and virtually limit voltage, on RTX 50 “Blackwell” GPUs.

My GeForce RTX 5090 GPU Is Running On Low Voltage After Installing NVIDIA’s Latest Drivers. Voltage Limits Introduced For RTX 50 GPUs?

A few days ago, NVIDIA released its newest GeForce Game Ready (GRD) driver, v595.59. The driver release is intended to be an optimized version for Resident Evil Requiem and offers additional improvements. However, soon after the driver was released, some users started reporting issues with the driver that caused the GPU fan to malfunction, clock speeds to be hampered, and overall game performance to be significantly lower than in previous releases.

Our writer, Sebastian Castellanos, also found that Resident Evil Requiem ran much slower than previous releases, and this wasn’t the case with the latest driver; in fact, Sebastian had to roll back to several older versions to achieve 68% higher performance in the game.

NVIDIA quickly addressed the issue, removing the GRD v595.59 driver from its download page, and asking users to revert to an older version, such as v591.86 WHQL. Yesterday, NVIDIA released a fixed version of its driver, v595.71 WHQL, which fixes this issue and returns performance to the levels users expect from their GPUs.

Here is NVIDIA’s update regarding this issue:

Update March 2, 6 a.m. PT: We have resolved the issues mentioned above, and released a new version Resident devil Requiem Game Ready drivers, which you can download from the NVIDIA app or GeForce.com.

February 26, 11 am PT Update: We’ve discovered a bug in the Game Ready and Studio 595.59 WHQL drivers and have temporarily removed the download while our team investigates. For users who have installed this driver and are experiencing problems with fan control, please roll back to 591.86 WHQL.

However, it seems that the new driver causes new problems related to GPU voltage. First spotted by tech channel Bang4BuckPC Gamer on YouTube, it looks like the release of GeForce Game Ready v595.71 WHQL is limiting the voltage on the RTX 50 GPU.

As per the channel, the RTX 5090 they are using is now locked under 3 GHz frequency and under 1V voltage. The same card previously ran at over 1V and 3 GHz+ in 3D workloads. This is seen when the graphics card is overclocked, so there is now an artificial lock.

We wanted to confirm that for ourselves, and from our own testing we can confirm that this is indeed the case.

We used an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 SUPRIM X, previously running on the NVIDIA GRD v591.86 release. These are the drivers that NVIDIA recommended to us for testing Resident Evil Requiem. At Furmark, we can note that the GPU operates at a voltage of 1020-1030V with a frequency reaching 3015-3030 MHz. This is with a manual overclock of +200 MHz on the GPU core, +2000 MHz on Memory, and the core voltage slider set to 100%.

NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Clock on GRD Driver 591.86 (OC Manual):

With the new GRD v595.71 release using the same setup and GPU, the card operates at sub 3 GHz frequencies and voltages of 1.005-1.010V, sometimes even reaching 1.00V. The card operates at a higher voltage without OC at 1.015V, but without OC, previous drivers had voltages that reached 1.03-1.04V. Currently, our RTX 5090 GPU is running at a lower voltage than before with manual overclock.

NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Clock at GRD 595.71 Driver (Manual OC):

NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Hour on GRD 595.71 Driver (Stock Specs):

So NVIDIA has introduced some voltage limitations in its latest driver. We don’t know the reason, but this may be caused by a 16-pin connector issue, to limit more cases of GPU burning or damage. With this voltage limitation, we expect overclockers to be a little disappointed as they have to work with a limited voltage range.

In terms of gaming performance, Resident Evil Requiem now runs better, and whether you’re running the GPU at stock or overclocked specs, you won’t be able to tell the difference from the GPU’s limited voltage.

News Source: Beyond FPS

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