Nvidia’s latest driver, version 531.18, appears to have a bug that causes high CPU usage after exiting games. However, the company admits (opens in new tab) that the problem exists, so expect Nvidia to issue a hotfix or a new driver version that fixes the annoying bug.
As it turns out, Nvidia’s Display Container Service causes 10% – 15% higher CPU usage after a game is closed, which can be observed in Windows Task Manager. Some Reddit users believe the bug was caused by Nvidia’s Game Session Telemetry Plugin version 531.18 (NvGSTPlugin.dll).
It should be noted that not all systems are affected by the bug. For example, our colleague Andreas Schilling tried to replicate the issue but failed.
“I tried to recreate the issue on two systems with the latest 531.18 drivers and was not able to get the NVIDIA container task going crazy like this,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
Some Reddit users suggest blocking/removing NvGSTPlugin.dll to fix the problem manually, but it is unclear what side effects this remedy may cause, so this solution can hardly be recommended. Therefore, the easiest fix is to use the previous 528.49 WHQL driver that may not support some of the latest games, but at least it works without significant problems.
While Nvidia formally admits the problem, the company didn’t reveal when it plans to release a hotfix or a new version without this bug. Meanwhile, given that the bug is rather annoying, it is likely that Nvidia is inclined to release a hotfix sooner rather than later, so perhaps it makes sense to wait a little bit before rolling back to a previous version of Nvidia’s driver.