Recent NVIDIA GPU Idle Voltage Bug Fixed In GeForce 381.89 WHQL Drivers

When the NVIDIA GeForce 381.89 WHQL video card drivers came out yesterday we told you that one of the bug fixes in the release notes was that GPU idling voltage was increased. We reached out to our NVIDIA contacts and they wanted to speak to the software team to get specifics on what the change was for. We just heard back from our friends at NVIDIA and were told that the previous GeForce 381.65 graphics driver actually contained a bug that caused the NVIDIA GPU’s idle voltage to be slightly higher than previous GeForce drivers. NVIDIA didn’t provide us a list of affected GPUs, but did let us know that GPU-Z was one of the tools used by end users that reported the issue to them that helped find the bug in the first place.

Some users in the EVGA and NVIDIA community were reporting that their idle temperatures on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti were a good 5-10C higher than before at idle and when they looked closer they noticed that the idle voltage on the GPU went from 0.6250V to 0.6620V. We fired up our EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 FTW+ video card real quick this morning to see if we could see any voltage differences that might impact our review numbers since we used GeForce 381.65 drivers in our recent AMD Radeon RX 580 video card coverage.

GeForce 381.65 Video Card Driver:

GeForce 381.89 Video Card Driver:

The GeForce GTX 1060 was idling at 0.6250V with both driver versions although our GPU temperature dropped by 5C on the latest build for unknown reasons as the ambient room temperature is close to being the same both times. While the bug doesn’t impact all GPUs we highly suggest updating to GeForce 381.89 WHQL drivers to ensure your cards idle Voltages are properly set as it may reduce your idle temperature and power consumption! NVIDIA managed to identify and fix the bug in about three weeks, which isn’t too bad and we haven’t heard of any damaged cards.