Nvidia just fixed a major problem that may have slowed down your CPU

By Monica J. White Published March 7, 2023

Nvidia’s latest graphics driver came out with an unfortunate side effect — it drained your CPU usage. What’s perhaps worse is that the only way to fix the issue permanently was to go back to an older version of the driver.

Fortunately, the problem was short-lived as Nvidia just rolled out a hotfix, and you should get it quickly to give your CPU a break. Here’s where to find it.

The RTX 4070 Ti graphics card on a pink background. — Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

If you tend to install new drivers the moment they come out, you may have received an unpleasant surprise bundled with Nvidia’s driver 531.18. It came with a bug that made Nvidia Container take up around 10% to 15% of CPU usage.

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The bug, which seems to have affected each of Nvidia’s best GPUs, was triggered by starting a game and then exiting it. Even though the game wasn’t running anymore, Nvidia Container continued consuming CPU resources. There were only three workarounds available for the bug: rolling back the driver, restarting your PC, or forcing Nvidia Container to shut down after each gaming session.

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Nvidia was quick to acknowledge the issue, but it made no promises as to when a fix would be coming. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for a hotfix to appear. It’s now time to update your drivers to Nvidia’s latest version (531.26).

As per the official Nvidia website, the hotfix addresses the issue of Nvidia Container hogging CPU resources and also fixes a problem with random bug checks on notebooks. If you want to get the latest (now functional) version of the driver, head to Nvidia’s support page to download the hotfix for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Downloading drivers on day one is always a bit of a double-edged sword. Not too long ago, a clash between Nvidia’s drivers and a new Discord update caused the popular app to slow down Nvidia graphics cards. Holding off on updating right away usually helps users avoid these kinds of problems, but it’s also not a great idea to wait too long to install new drivers.

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Monica J. White

Computing Writer

Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…

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