Update for NVIDIA graphics cards due to Discord

NVIDIA is releasing a fix for performance degradation due to Discord. This fix should be automatically supported by Windows.

Video cards are pretty finicky creatures. All it takes is a tiny grain of sand, and the consequences can be very inconvenient on a computer. It is for this reason that manufacturers such as NVIDIA regularly offer updates. Sometimes to optimize game performance, sometimes to fix a bug. It is this last option that interests us today, or rather a bug in the very popular Discord service for players.

NVIDIA releases a fix for slow performance due to Discord

NVIDIA has released a fix for a bug that causes some of its GPUs to experience a dramatic drop in performance when the Discord app is open. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, the company explains that Windows will now automatically download an app profile update the next time a user logs into their PC. This update fixes an issue where some NVIDIA GPUs, including RTX 30 series models such as the 3080 and 3060 Ti, do not consume their memory as fast as they should when Discord is open in the background. In some cases, users may even experience a 200MHz loss resulting in the performance degradation often seen in most games.

Support for this patch should be automatically handled by Windows.

On Reddit and Linus Tech Tips, users were the first to find this bug and describe it well. This problem appeared with a recent Discord update, in a version that added support for the AV1 codec. With this new codec, RTX 40 series card users can stream their games in 4K at 60fps using Discord Nitro. However, the bug does not seem to affect these cards. That being said, NVIDIA quickly acknowledged the existence of the problem and offered a temporary workaround, pending a full blown fix that is already available.

GeForce users can now download the App Profile Update for Discord. This resolves a recent issue where the memory clocks of some GeForce GPUs would not reach full speed when Discord was running in the background. The update is automatically downloaded to your computer the next time you log on to Windows. pic.twitter.com/89nwugWQFF

— NVIDIA Support (@nvidiacc) February 3, 2023