NVIDIA's latest driver release might be affecting voltages, virtually restricting them, on RTX 50 "Blackwell" GPUs.
My GeForce RTX 5090 GPU Is Running At Lower Voltages After Installing NVIDIA's Latest Driver. Voltage Limitations Introduced For RTX 50 GPUs?
[Update - 3/5/2026] - NVIDIA has released its new GeForce Hotfix Display Driver, v595.76, which fixes the voltage cap issue reported on RTX 50 GPUs.
When the graphics card is overclocked, GPU voltage may become capped, preventing it from boosting to expected levels [5934973]
We can confirm that this fixed the voltage cap on our RTX 5090 GPU as seen below:
A few days ago, NVIDIA released its latest GeForce Game Ready (GRD) drivers, v595.59. The driver release was meant to be the optimized version for Resident Evil Requiem and offered additional fixes. However, as soon as the driver launched, several users started reporting issues with the driver where GPU fans were not working, clock speeds were being hampered, and overall performance in games was massively lower than previous releases.
Our writer, Sebastian Castellanos, also found that Resident Evil Requiem ran much slower than the previous release, and this wasn't something that was going on with the latest driver; in fact, Sebastian had to roll back to several older versions to achieve 68% higher performance in the game.
NVIDIA quickly addressed this issue, removed the v595.59 GRD drivers from its download page, and asked users to roll back to older versions, such as v591.86 WHQL. Yesterday, NVIDIA released the fixed version of its drivers, v595.71 WHQL, which fixed these issues and brought the performance back to levels that users expect from their GPUs.
The following are NVIDIA's updates on the matter:
March 2nd, 6am PT Update: We have resolved the aforementioned issues, and released a new version of the Resident Evil Requiem Game Ready Driver, which you can download from the NVIDIA app or GeForce.com.
February 26th, 11am PT Update: We have discovered a bug in the Game Ready and Studio 595.59 WHQL drivers and have removed the downloads temporarily while our team investigates. For users that have already installed this driver and are experiencing issues with fan control, please roll back to 591.86 WHQL.
But it looks like the new drivers introduce a new issue in relation to GPU voltages. First discovered by tech channel, Bang4BuckPC Gamer on YouTube, it looks like the GeForce Game Ready v595.71 WHQL release is restricting voltages on RTX 50 GPUs.
As per the channel, the RTX 5090 used by them is now locked below 3 GHz frequencies and voltages of sub 1V. The same card was previously running at over 1V and 3 GHz+ frequencies in 3D workloads. This can be seen when the graphics card is overclocked, so an artificial lock is now in place.
We wanted to confirm this ourselves, and from our own tests, we can confirm that this is indeed the case.
We used an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 SUPRIM X, which was previously running on NVIDIA's GRD v591.86 release. This is the driver that NVIDIA recommended us for testing Resident Evil Requiem. In Furmark, we can note that the GPU operates at a voltage of 1.020-1.030V with frequencies hitting 3015-3030 MHz. This is with a manual overclock of +200 MHz on the GPU core, +2000 MHz on the Memory, and the core voltage slider set to 100%.
NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Clocks on GRD 591.86 Drivers (Manual OC):
With the new GRD v595.71 release using the same settings and same GPU, the card operates at sub 3 GHz frequencies and voltages of 1.005-1.010V, sometimes even hitting 1.00V. The card operates at higher voltages without OC at 1.015V, but without OC, the previous drivers had voltages hitting 1.03-1.04V. At stock, our RTX 5090 GPU runs at lower voltages than what it did previously under a manual overclock.
NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Clocks on GRD 595.71 Drivers (Manual OC):
NVIDIA RTX 5090 Voltage/Clocks on GRD 595.71 Drivers (Stock Spec):
So NVIDIA has introduced some voltage restrictions in its latest drivers. We don't know why, but they could be due to the 16-pin connector issues, to limit more cases related to burning or GPU damage. With these voltage restrictions, we can expect overclockers to be a bit disappointed as they'll have to work with limited voltage ranges.
As far as gaming performance is concerned, Resident Evil Requiem does run better now, and whether you run your GPU at stock or overclocked specs, you won't be able to tell the difference from the limited GPU voltages.
News Source: Beyond FPS
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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