Solved NVIDIA driver weird issue: games lag and is on low FPS, but reinstalling driver fixes the problem until restart

UPDATE: The issue seems to have been fixed, so I will mark as solved, but I'm still going to keep a watch on this one.

What did it for me was resetting voltage. I shut down my laptop completely, making sure it is unplugged (my laptop does not have removable battery), then held down power button for 15-20 seconds, then started it back up. Testing the games out, even made sure to double check by hibernating and then resuming (since hibernating triggered the issue again), and so far there's no lag, everything is back to how it should be (GPU usage hovering at 50% give or take for Genshin, 60 FPS, etc.) Therefore I'm thinking somehow there was a bit of voltage issue which resulted in the GPU acting up incorrectly, and a simple voltage reset fixed things to how it should be.

I realize it's so unorthodox and random, but hey, next time I have this issue, I will at least remember to look at this one. I usually love hibernating because I want to continue on the fly, it's not too different from shutting down.

"I shut down my laptop completely, making sure it is unplugged (my laptop does not have removable battery)"
Maybe, but most Laptops have a switch in the UEFI/BIOS for disconnecting the battery.

You probably don't know, but there are voltage regulators in various areas of a laptop. They are there because of variations in the battery voltage and when running off the charger.
So your hard reset would not have changed voltages where it matters.

I also have the same issue and can not get it resolved by reinstalling the Nvidia drivers.
I have also tried with a fresh install of windows and nothing seems to resolve the issue, if somebody finds something that could resolve this i'd be forever grateful for sharing. Currently im trying to download windows build KB5067036 to see if it resolves the issue.

I am having this problem too.

To be clear, it's not an issue with Windows Update. I checked in Device Manager and the graphics driver was the same before and after I reinstalled. Literally installing the driver that is already installed will temporarily fix it. In fact, Windows Update installs a newer driver but that too works for a while and then becomes jerky after a while.

I just tried installing a BIOS update. Everything seems nice and responsive again now, but I don't know how long that will last.

MrPMorris said:

I am having this problem too.

To be clear, it's not an issue with Windows Update. I checked in Device Manager and the graphics driver was the same before and after I reinstalled. Literally installing the driver that is already installed will temporarily fix it. In fact, Windows Update installs a newer driver but that too works for a while and then becomes jerky after a while.

I just tried installing a BIOS update. Everything seems nice and responsive again now, but I don't know how long that will last.

Click to expand...

I take this opportunity to tell you about my own experience. While I didn't notice any difference in performance, I saw that playing some videos in Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), the LAV Video Decoder did not use hardware acceleration (nVidia CUDA), but played all supported formats (AVC, HEVC, MPEG) in software (using the CPU). I tried unsuccessfully some settings but I couldn't manage to fix that since I didn't have done any changes to the configuration of the player or the LAV Video Decoder. I then tried to launch the nVidia Control Panel to check the settings there and I realized it was missing from the right-click menu of the desktop. I searched for nVidia but only the nVidia app was there, not the much better nVidia Control Panel. An examination of the driver version in Device Manager confirmed my suspicions, Windows Update had replaced my recent (Jan 2026) driver with an older version (Dec 2025) without installing the nVidia Control Panel. This older version apparently had some incompatibility and LAV Video Decoder could not detect my nVidia card and use it on the default "DXVA2" hardware decoder setting, unless I changed that to the older "CUVID" and forcing CUDA use if available. Once I downloaded and installed the latest official driver directly from nVidia, everything was back to normal. That's why I insist to avoid the easy solution, Windows Update (or even worse some driver tool) and always download the official driver directly from nVidia. To maximize compatibility and to get the full features (not basic functionality) including the nVidia Control Panel to tweak appearance and performance.