Discord might be throttling your Nvidia GPU's memory, but here's how you can fix it

In brief: If you frequently leave Discord open on your desktop and have recently noticed degraded game performance from your Nvidia GPU, a Discord glitch might be the culprit. Nvidia will release a fix soon, but also offers directions for manually rectifying the problem.

This week, Nvidia acknowledged that a recent update to Discord caused it to throttle the memory on Nvidia GPUs. This glitch could affect game performance as it prevents the VRAM from reaching its full clock speed while launching games.

The GPU manufacturer plans to patch the issue with a future update, but has also provided a roundabout solution for those who can't wait. The manual fix involves using the GeForce 3D Profile Manager to edit an SLI profile - a fairly complex operation.

Users who don't have the 3D Profile Manager can download it from Nvidia's website. After installing and opening the program, select "Export SLI Profiles." Once a file explorer window appears, choose a location to export to and save the Nvidia Profiles file, which should be a text file.

Then open the file in Notepad and search for "Discord." A section should appear starting with "Profile 'Discord'" and ending with "EndProfile." At the bottom, right above "EndProfile" and below "Setting ID_0x809d5f60 = 0x10000000," type "Setting ID_0x50166c5e = 0x00000000." The section should then appear like the screenshot above.

Afterward, save the profile as a .txt file, return to the 3D Profile Manager, and select "Import SLI Profiles." When the explorer window appears, select the file you just saved, click "Open," and then close the 3D Profile Manager.

Nvidia didn't clarify which update may have caused the problem. It may have been the recent Discord patch that added the ability for streamers with RTX 40 series GPUs to encode using the AV1 codec.

The new codec has shown significant efficiency gains over H.264, letting streamers and content creators encode clearer videos while consuming less bandwidth. Furthermore, AV1 is royalty-free, unlike H.265.

However, encoding H.265 through hardware requires the latest graphics cards like the RTX 40 series, AMD's RDNA3, and Intel's Arc Alchemist. Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs will also include hardware AV1 encoding.

Discord now uses this functionality to let Nitro subscribers encode at 8Mbps in 4K@60fps. It isn't clear when Discord might extend AV1 encoding to subscribers with RDNA3 or Arc Alchemist GPUs.