I came back after a week away and suddenly my PC is struggling with big games. Mortal Kombat 1 barely loads shaders for 10 minutes, then sticks to 60 fps briefly before dropping down to 3-5 fps. Elden Ring won’t load at all. Marvel Rivals only works with the new experimental shader setting. I’ve updated my GPU drivers, ran system file checks, cleaned out dust, and monitored temps—everything looks fine. My RTX 2070 has never had problems before. MSI Afterburner isn’t showing any issues, and I doubt my GPU is secretly being used for mining since I haven’t installed anything suspicious. Before I take it to a pro, what else should I check?
2 Answers
I’d recommend using DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to completely remove your current GPU drivers and then do a fresh, clean install of the latest ones. Sometimes just updating over old drivers isn’t enough and can cause weird glitches like you’re describing. If that doesn’t help and you’re comfortable with it, reinstalling Windows could help rule out a tricky software or driver conflict. It may sound extreme but it’s usually faster than hunting down the exact problem.
Sometimes the latest Nvidia drivers cause issues, especially right after a major update. Since you said you updated drivers just a few days ago, it’s possible the new driver is actually messing with the big games. You might want to try rolling back to the previous version and see if that helps. It’s a bit hit-or-miss but worth a shot before taking the PC to a pro.
That’s what I was worried about. I’ll try the older driver version and report back if it improves things.
Good call, I’ve heard about DDU before but didn’t want to jump to reinstalling drivers right away since I’d already updated them. Still, I’ll try the clean uninstall method next. Thanks!