Nvidia issues hotfix for CPU usage bug in latest driver update

Nvidia’s 531.18 Game Ready drivers introduced some new features, including RTX Video Super Resolution. Though, users reported issues with high CPU utilization. Nvidia has swiftly responded with a hotfix.

Nvidia’s latest “Game Ready” drivers pointed towards not only news for an unreleased Counter-Strike title, but also a handful of brand new features, such as RTX Video Super Resolution. But, barely a week after its release, users have now found a potential bug in the drivers which is causing higher-than-usual CPU usage.

Reddit users have been documenting their issues on /r/nvidia. User Outrunner8 reported, “For me with my 13700k, nvidia container was eating 7% cpu, and 1 core was 100% pegged [at] all times with my PC at idle.”

While other users are experiencing other bugs entirely, “531.18 cause Hogwarts Legacy to bluescreen and crash for some. I have done a clean reinstall of the driver, cleaned the shader cache, verified the game files but I’ll have to do a rollback.”

Though, while several other issues have been reported, the main one seems to be that the driver is causing CPU usage spikes, which can affect performance while gaming. Some users are reporting that some games such as Hogwarts Legacy are broken, with Nvidia seemingly aware of the issue.

The bug is also causing BSOD issues for some, with the high CPU usage from an Nvidia application seemingly to blame. Though, around a day later, Nvidia issued a driver update to solve the issue.

Nvidia issues driver update to fix CPU usage issues

On March 7, Nvidia swiftly responded to the driver issues with a hotfix driver, named 531.26. This reportedly solves the CPU utilization issues, and you will be able to easily fix it up, without having to uninstall your display drivers.

The fix can be downloaded directly at Nvidia’s site, or via GeForce Experience.