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 submit across the hotfix launch, although solely third within the checklist of said fixes, the problem is cited as ‘GPU monitoring utilities might 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 Secure Diffusion sub-Reddit, titled Learn to Save Your GPU!, turned a useful resource for anecdotal points and user-reported updates regarding the new driver. From these, and different experiences across the internet, some time-line of emergent issues might 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 submit 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 motive force replace, instruments like MSI Afterburner and in-game displays such because the one in Name of Responsibility (which typically entry native system readings, a lot as Process 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 problem occurred throughout regular use, not simply after waking the system from sleep.
Person suggestions throughout numerous boards highlighted a normal disruption of regular fan curve habits 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-about commonplace operational hundreds, as detailed on this remark:
‘I may inform one thing was off. The climate exterior 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 had been operating at max, and temps seemed nice at first—round 68°C to 72°C after gaming for some time.
‘At first, that appeared regular—till the following morning, once I realized these aren’t idle temps, and the followers had been nonetheless [kicking].
‘I had executed some AI overclocking after fixing just a few issues recently, so I wasn’t positive 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 affords some clues about adjustments that will have contributed to the brand new points. In part 5.5, NVIDIA acknowledges that GPU temperature might be reported incorrectly on NVIDIA Optimus methods, particularly exhibiting zero levels when no purposes are operating.
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 Difficulty
On Optimus methods, temperature-reporting instruments corresponding to Speccy or GPU-Z report that the NVIDIA GPU temperature is zero when no purposes are operating.
5.5.2 Clarification
On Optimus methods, when the NVIDIA GPU is just not 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 in consequence.
These instruments will report correct temperatures solely when the GPU is awake and operating.
NVIDIA Optimus is a GPU switching know-how 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 searching, it reverts to built-in (onboard) graphics.
The replace seems to have prolonged a habits 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 situations, it’s honest to say that the graphics card’s VBIOS would possible have prevented everlasting GPU harm. VBIOS enforces thermal and energy limits on the firmware degree, independently of the motive force.
Due to this fact even when a driver had been to trigger improper fan habits or misreport temperatures, the VBIOS ought to nonetheless throttle efficiency, ramp up fan exercise, or else shut down the GPU to forestall {hardware} failure.
That doesn’t imply the chance 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 difficulty of this nature may mislead a big proportion of affected customers, who might try treatments for non-existent issues, and even probably trigger harm to their methods by making use of non-relevant ‘fixes’.
The errant habits brought on by replace 576.02 was significantly 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 experiences that it supplied some helpful efficiency enhancements. However the availability of the hotfix, and the extent of disruption that 576.02 appears to have precipitated, on the time of writing it stays accessible for obtain* at NVIDIA’s web site.
Afterglow
When it comes to the fallout from the defective replace, there are quite a few varieties of harm and or inconvenience reported: person Frankie_T9000 reported that his GPU crashed on boot resulting from 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 previous 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 saved exhibiting that my gpu temps had been consistently at 27°C, so the followers did not activate, which led to overheating points. I believed it was a me difficulty however after putting in the earlier driver all of it labored out nice once more. Additionally, the temps arent displayed appropriately in taskmanager.’
Although NVIDIA (because it states persistently in every hotfix launch) usually supplies hotfixes for explicit video-games or platforms, the chance of warmth harm to or round a GPU is greater 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 prone to be triggered solely periodically in a sport, 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 revealed Tuesday, April 22, 2025
