Nvidia’s latest GeForce driver is the culprit in CPU spikes users have been experiencing after playing 3D games.
Users began experiencing issues after the February 28th update that brought version 531.18 of the driver. In a company forum post, a member of Nvidia’s staff acknowledged the issue in the release notes:
Higher CPU usage from NVIDIA Container might be observed after exiting a game [4007208]
Despite the fairly benign description, the issue appears to be having significantly worse effects in real-life.
One user wrote the following:
It causes the “Nvidia container” process to load on CPU by 20-30% after games, randomly, which leads to stutters in the operating system until you reboot it. (Windows 11 latest, RTX 3090)
The company is promising a fix Tuesday, March 7.
