Nvidia GPU slowed down by Discord? There's a workaround

The popular chat server app is slowing down Nvidia GPUs by up to 200MHz – Nvidia is fixing it, and has offered a workaround in the meantime

Feb 1

➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Discord sows discord

🚦 A recent AV1 streaming Discord update is slowing Nvidia GPUs by 200Mhz
👍 Nvidia was quick on the draw with a workaround, will issue OTA update later
🎮 The Discord update seems to only affect pre-40-series Nvidia RTS GPUs

A recent Windows Discord app update is wreaking havoc with some folks’ GPUs, as reported at The Verge. The problem was reported by forum users at Linus Tech Tips, with Nvidia responding on the Nvidia subreddit, where it was crossposted, with a link detailing a quick workaround on the Nvidia support page, while the company works on the issue.

So what’s happening? It seems that, when Discord users with certain Nvidia graphics cards attempt to run a game while the app is open on their machines, clock speeds on the GPU are reduced by as much as 200MHz. The update in question turns on AV1 streaming with GeForce RTX 40-series cards, but Nvidia’s best GPU doesn’t seem to be affected – generally, the users afflicted seemed to have cards in the older 30-series.

Check out our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 review

Users on Reddit also reported a similar issue with OBS Studio, though the Nvidia representative responding on the thread wasn’t able to reproduce the behavior. A quick search of Nvidia’s knowledgebase page produced no recent articles covering it.

Gerardo Delgado @gerdelgado

Discord is currently rolling out an update that enables AV1 streaming with GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs! The upate is rolling out starting this week and will slowly populate to all users. With AV1 you'll be able to stream up to 4K60 with nitro, at 8 Mbps!

Better streaming with AV1

The update, issued last week, lets users with GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs use AV1 streams at 4K resolution with 60 frames per second and an 8Mbps bitrate. For context, that’s a lower bitrate than what you’d expect from a Netflix stream. Discord streaming is done as a P2P affair, and when users with machines incapable of decoding that stream join, it will automatically switch to the older H.264 standard.

Nvidia’s temporary fix involves downloading a GPU profile manager and updating the Discord profile with a new setting ID, then exporting a new profile to a “.txt” file and re-importing it, then quitting and reopening Discord.

Nvidia says it will release an OTA update soon to make this hotfix unnecessary.