Discord: Graphics memory is downclocked on Geforce GPUs – official solution [Update]

February 4th, 2023 at 9:10 a.m. by Maximilian Hohm – Now updated: In its latest version, Discord ensures that the graphics memory of Geforce cards of the 4000 series is not fully clocked up. This is due to the storage subsystem and AV1 support. Now there are first solutions that should prevent the problem until Nvidia releases an update. Read more about this below.

Original article from February 2nd, 2023: Anyone who likes to gamble with friends needs a program for coordination and entertainment. In addition to classics such as Teamspeak, Discord is also ideal for this. Discord is a somewhat colorful program that offers many additional features and one of these features has now become somewhat fatal. Discord offers video streaming options that can be accelerated by CPU or GPU. With the last update, AV1 support has also moved into the software.

Product liability for software: finally no more bugged games?

AV1 is a very powerful video compression method and is supported by the latest graphics cards. However, with Discord it has ensured that Nvidia graphics cards no longer use their full memory clock and therefore lose some performance. For many users, Discord runs in the background when the PC is on, so the loss affects all games and applications equally. Since Nvidia has only activated AV1 for its RTX 4000 models, only these can be affected. Against this background, however, the question arises as to why AMD and Intel graphics cards with AV1 do not cause such problems.

It appears to be a memory subsystem issue that Nvidia has not addressed in detail. Nvidia is currently working at full speed on a solution and would like to distribute it as soon as possible with an over-the-air update (OTA). Until then, however, there are also some simple solutions. The first would be using Teamspeak instead of Discord, the second is the Nvidia Program Geforce 3D Profile Manager.

If this is installed, the export of SLI profiles must be selected, the corresponding profile saved in a desired location and searched for “Discord”. At the end of the profile, “Setting ID_0x50166c5e = 0x00000000” is entered in a new line and the profile is then saved. The saved profile is then read in again using “Import SLI Profiles” and the application is closed. The graphics memory should now also be clocked up again.

Quelle: Tom’s Hardware

Official update is here

Updated 02/04/2023: Same as Nvidia confirmed on Twitter, there is now an official solution. Geforce users can now download an app profile update for Discord. This fixes a “recent issue where the memory clock on some Geforce GPUs was not reaching full speed while Discord was running in the background”. The update will automatically download to the PC the next time you log into Windows, according to Nvidia.