Nvidia And Discord Usage Simultaneously Creates a Performance Bug

There is currently a strange problem in the interaction between Discord and graphics cards from Nvidia. If the software is open or running in the background while playing, the graphics cards will run at a lower clock speed.

When software and hardware don’t get along

Discord has become increasingly popular in recent years, and Nvidia graphics cards are very common. So when problems arise between these two products of all things, millions of users are affected. It is thanks to users of the Linus Tech-Tips forum that such a bug has now been discovered. Apparently, the flaw lies in the way Discord accesses the video streaming encoding/decoding engines provided by Nvidia.

After an initial analysis, the impact on performance depends on the type of card used. When Discord is open, Nvidia’s 30 series cards seem to lose around 200 MHz, and some users speak of a clock rate drop of up to 500 MHz with older 10 series cards. A current test or informative user reports on the 40 cards and their behavior are not yet available. As The Register writes in its report, “The performance difference shouldn’t matter much on new cards, but it might be noticeable on older models”.

Patch later, workaround there

Nvidia recently confirmed the problem in a support article. “When Discord is open in the background, the clock of the graphics card does not reach full speed,” the company is unequivocal. The problem appeared after the recent update of the Discord app. As explained further, an update will be made available for PC users “at a later date”.

If you want to get rid of the problem beforehand, you can use an interim solution. This requires adjustments in the GeForce 3D profile manager and the SLI profile used by Discord.