Unexpected performance slowdown following driver updates.
Unexpected performance slowdown following driver updates.
As a relatively inexperienced PC gamer, I acquired a prebuilt system during the holiday season and recently realized my graphics card was utilizing an outdated driver dating back to 2017. After updating it, my GPU utilization dropped significantly – averaging between 30 and 50 percent (occasionally reaching zero) every ten seconds, regardless of the game I was playing. This resulted in noticeable lag and frame rate instability, even with less demanding titles like Factorio. I attempted to revert to older drivers but the issue remained, and I’m now uncertain how to proceed.
My system is not experiencing overheating; the fan temperature consistently remains between 50 and 60 degrees Celsius. I used Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove the drivers, and even a full system reset failed to resolve the problem. I am running an AMD FX-6300 six-core processor, with an Nvidia GTX 1050 and 8 GB of RAM.
I apologize for the delay in my reply. I initially believed I was precise in my initial message, but despite trying to resolve the issue by uninstalling the newest graphics driver and reinstalling previous versions—including my original one—the problem persists. Furthermore, I've observed that when the graphics card’s workload decreases, the processor usage increases, yet neither component reaches maximum capacity. The frame rate fluctuations and corresponding graphics card usage dips occur intermittently, roughly every 15 seconds, lasting for approximately another 10 seconds. This behavior continues even when I am motionless and no content is loading. Interestingly, upon downloading drivers, the PhysX driver remains constant—always at the most current version (the one that has caused the difficulties)—and it isn't deleted by DDU, potentially suggesting it is a contributing factor. However, I am unsure of how to effectively remove this driver.