Yesterday NVIDIA rushed out a essential hotfix to comprise the fallout from a previous driver launch that had triggered alarm throughout AI and gaming communities by inflicting methods to falsely report protected GPU temperatures – at the same time as cooling calls for quietly climbed towards probably essential ranges.
In NVIDIA’s official publish across the hotfix launch, although solely third within the checklist of said fixes, the difficulty is cited as ‘GPU monitoring utilities could cease reporting the GPU temperature after PC wakes from sleep’.
Shortly after the affected Recreation Prepared driver 576.02 was rolled out, a pinned thread on the Steady Diffusion sub-Reddit, titled Learn to Save Your GPU!, grew to become a useful resource for anecdotal points and user-reported updates in regards to the new driver. From these, and different stories across the internet, some time-line of emergent issues may be established.
The primary Reddit report of the bug appears to have occurred late Friday afternoon UTC, on the ZephyrusG14 subreddit, the place the person fricy81 cited a publish at NVIDIA boards (archived):
A person at NVIDIA boards finds points after the 576.02 replace. Supply: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/boards/game-ready-drivers/13/563010/geforce-grd-57602-feedback-thread-released-41625/3524072/
The person at NVIDIA boards reported that after putting in the driving force replace, instruments like MSI Afterburner and in-game screens such because the one in Name of Obligation (which typically entry native system readings, a lot as Activity Supervisor’s GPU panel does in Home windows) stopped updating GPU temperature readings, freezing at round 35-36°C.
Restarting the monitoring software program had no impact, the person said, and solely a full system reboot would restore correct readings. Instruments like HWInfo and NVIDIA’s personal monitoring app continued to report temperatures appropriately. The person emphasised that the difficulty occurred throughout regular use, not simply after waking the system from sleep.
Person suggestions throughout varied boards highlighted a common disruption of regular fan curve conduct and an alteration of core thermal regulation, leading to graphics processing models idling at unexpectedly excessive temperatures, and alarmingly overheating beneath what would sometimes be thought of commonplace operational hundreds, as detailed on this remark:
‘I might inform one thing was off. The climate outdoors was in all probability round 55°F / 12°C, however I used to be cooking alive in my room. My window was open, and but I couldn’t really feel any distinction. All of the followers have been working at max, and temps appeared superb at first—round 68°C to 72°C after gaming for some time.
‘At first, that appeared regular—till the subsequent morning, after I realized these aren’t idle temps, and the followers have been nonetheless [kicking].
‘I had performed some AI overclocking after fixing a couple of issues recently, so I wasn’t certain if the values had simply spiked too excessive. It’s occurred as soon as earlier than after putting in ASUS AI Suite 3 – the BIOS settings wouldn’t even work correctly due to it.
‘Anyway, I went forward and rolled again to an older driver for now.’
Sub-Optimum
The official launch PDF for the 576.02 driver replace presents some clues about modifications which will have contributed to the brand new points. In part 5.5, NVIDIA acknowledges that GPU temperature may be reported incorrectly on NVIDIA Optimus methods, particularly exhibiting zero levels when no functions are working.
Part 5.5 of the official 576.02 replace notes addresses temperature-monitoring points that appear to have affected a wider variety of methods than the Optimus system. Supply: https://us.obtain.nvidia.com/Home windows/576.02/576.02-win11-win10-release-notes.pdf
The discharge states:
5.5 GPU Temperature Reported Incorrectly on Optimus Programs
5.5.1 Concern
On Optimus methods, temperature-reporting instruments corresponding to Speccy or GPU-Z report that the NVIDIA GPU temperature is zero when no functions are working.
5.5.2 Rationalization
On Optimus methods, when the NVIDIA GPU just isn’t getting used then it’s put right into a low-power state. This causes temperature-reporting instruments to return incorrect values. Waking up the GPU to question the temperature would end in meaningless measurements as a result of the GPU temperature change because of this.
These instruments will report correct temperatures solely when the GPU is awake and working.
NVIDIA Optimus is a GPU switching expertise that toggles between built-in and discrete graphics based mostly on software calls for, to be able to mechanically stability efficiency and energy consumption, designed to preserve battery life and cut back energy consumption. For duties corresponding to gaming or HD video playback, Optimus prompts the discrete GPU for higher efficiency; throughout lighter actions corresponding to internet shopping, it reverts to built-in (onboard) graphics.
The replace seems to have prolonged a conduct beforehand restricted to Optimus methods, permitting the affected GPU to enter a low-power state whereas idle, even when not hosted on an Optimus system, in flip disrupting temperature reporting in third-party instruments.
Threat Adjustment
In most eventualities, it’s honest to say that the graphics card’s VBIOS would doubtless have prevented everlasting GPU injury. VBIOS enforces thermal and energy limits on the firmware degree, independently of the driving force.
Due to this fact even when a driver have been to trigger improper fan conduct or misreport temperatures, the VBIOS ought to nonetheless throttle efficiency, ramp up fan exercise, or else shut down the GPU to stop {hardware} failure.
That doesn’t imply the danger was trivial – sustained excessive temperatures can degrade efficiency over time or stress adjoining parts; moreover, absent a standard understanding that an up to date driver precipitated an issue (not least in methods the place drivers replace ‘silently’), a problem of this nature might mislead a big proportion of affected customers, who could try treatments for non-existent issues, and even probably trigger injury to their methods by making use of non-relevant ‘fixes’.
The errant conduct brought on by replace 576.02 was notably alarming for these engaged in synthetic intelligence workflows, the place high-performance {hardware} is routinely pushed to its thermal limits for prolonged durations.
The problematic 576.02 driver impressed a broader rash of complaints after its launch in mid-April, regardless of preliminary stories that it supplied some helpful efficiency enhancements. However the supply of the hotfix, and the extent of disruption that 576.02 appears to have precipitated, on the time of writing it stays out there for obtain* at NVIDIA’s web site.
Afterglow
When it comes to the fallout from the defective replace, there are quite a few kinds of injury and or inconvenience reported: person Frankie_T9000 reported that his GPU crashed on boot as a result of warmth buildup beneath the fault replace, and solely stabilized after undervolting. He commented ‘seems like its not completely harmed however must repaste asap (I’ve pads coming wednesday) suspect the outdated thermal paste was aged extra by the warmth buildup so im placing new paste pads.‘
Yesterday one other person in the identical thread said: ‘Im utilizing a customized fan curve wit msi afterburner, and it stored exhibiting that my gpu temps have been continually at 27°C, so the followers did not activate, which led to overheating points. I assumed it was a me challenge however after putting in the earlier driver all of it labored out superb once more. Additionally, the temps arent displayed appropriately in taskmanager.’
Although NVIDIA (because it states persistently in every hotfix launch) usually gives hotfixes for specific video-games or platforms, the danger of warmth injury to or round a GPU is larger for AI practitioners than for videogamers, since intensive machine studying processes corresponding to coaching or sustained inference place a GPU beneath constant long-term load – an occasion more likely to be triggered solely periodically in a recreation, which can ‘spike’ into excessive utilization for a boss-battle or a very demanding map part, however which is in any other case designed as a compromise between GPU exploitation and system stability.
* Archive: https://archive.ph/ylVR1
First printed Tuesday, April 22, 2025
