Nvidia just pulled the plug on its latest GeForce Game Ready driver only hours after it went live. The software update was supposed to prep systems for highly anticipated game releases, but instead, it introduced severe bugs that left users dealing with fan failures and voltage issues. This technical stumble caps off a tough day for the semiconductor heavyweight on Wall Street, with Nvidia’s stock (NASDAQ: NVDA) dropping 5.46% to close at $184.89 on February 26, though it saw a fractional bump to $185.00 in after-hours trading.
Critical Bugs and Throttled Hardware
Driver version 595.59 was built to optimize performance for the weekend launch of Marathon and the new Resident Evil Requiem. Instead of smoother frame rates, gamers quickly reported major hardware risks. Diagnostic tools like GPU-Z show that the faulty driver fails to recognize more than a single cooling fan, disabling the rest of the graphics card’s cooling system. On top of the cooling failures, the software appears to hard-cap internal voltage at roughly 0.95 volts. That strict limit severely throttles the clock speeds of top-tier cards, particularly the flagship GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.
Widespread Glitches and Missed Upgrades
The problems certainly don’t stop at fans and voltage. Users are getting hit with black screens and system crashes throwing the VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE error code. Gamers using Samsung TVs are even experiencing signal drops during HDR playback. The timing really couldn’t be worse for the company. This update was supposed to deliver massive visual upgrades, including DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction, right in time for Resident Evil Requiem. For now, those next-generation features are completely off the table.
Rollback Instructions and Missing Fixes
Nvidia confirmed the mess in an official blog post, stating they have temporarily removed the download link while engineers investigate. The company is urgently advising anyone who installed 595.59 to roll back to version 591.86 WHQL immediately to avoid potential hardware damage. You can handle the rollback directly through the “Drivers” menu in the Nvidia App. If you don’t use the app, you will need to uninstall the driver via the Windows Control Panel and manually download the older version from Nvidia’s website.
Pulling the update also means holding back several useful patches for older software. The 595.59 driver actually contained fixes for crashes in Final Fantasy XII and Total War: Three Kingdoms, alongside a patch for performance drops in the fourth act of Quantum Break. It also addressed an AV1 decoder bug affecting Blackmagic Design software, which will now remain an issue until a hotfix is released.
Growing Complexity in the GPU Market
While a lot of the initial complaints singled out the brand new RTX 50 series, the bug isn’t isolated to the newest hardware. Feedback confirms that RTX 40 owners, and even those running older generations, are running into the exact same issues. Writing modern graphics drivers is a massive undertaking involving millions of lines of code, making it incredibly hard to catch every bug before a public release.
Even a dominant tech giant like Nvidia—which practically runs the global artificial intelligence market by powering large language models with its GPUs, Cuda software platform, and data center networking—isn’t immune to software slip-ups. As traders actively watch the options chain to gauge market sentiment after the stock’s recent slide, Nvidia will need to iron out these fundamental driver issues quickly to keep their core gaming audience satisfied and protect their hardware ecosystem.
