Windows 11 2022 Update Is Causing Major Headaches For Some GeForce Owners
Microsoft has begun rolling out its first major update for Windows 11 (taking it to version 22H2), and as you might have guessed, it's causing issues on some PCs. In particular, gamers with GeForce graphics cards have logged a spattering of complaints ranging from unstable framerates and significantly degraded performance to G-Sync suddenly not working.
The litany of hardware combinations that exist in the PC space make unforeseen issues almost a guarantee with each major Windows update. We see it practically every time. This is why Microsoft has moved to a staggered roll out rather than making available major updates wholesale to every Windows user. It's also why it can be a good idea to avoid applying big Windows updates right away even if the option exists to do so.
For the 22H2 update, complaints are starting to pile up in a megathread on Reddit. "I just updated to 22H2 and I am dealing with extremely unstable FPS in all my games. I have good specs for gaming and have previously never seen any issues (Ryzen 3600, 1070 TI, 16GB RAM). Games are basically unplayable," one user wrote.
Others chimed in to say they've been experiencing the same thing, as well as other annoyances. One user reported "serious performance hitches, both on desktop and especially in gaming," and further noted that the update "completely broke G-Sync" on his PC with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.
Another user said DLSS became "extremely granulated in a couple of titles," and to make matters worse, they ran into a blue screen of death (BSOD) error when trying to revert.
We experienced issues in Destiny 2 and other games after applying the Windows 11 22H2 update
We've run into problems with the latest Windows update ourselves. One of our staff members experienced significant frame drops and stuttering on a PC configured with an Intel Core i7-8700K CPU, Gigabyte Z390 Designare motherboard, NVIDIA Titan XP graphics card, and 16GB of DDR4-2800. Playing around with different drivers and BIOS versions (F8 and F9) had no effect. Incidentally, swapping out the Titan XP for an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT made the situation even worse, though that setup was only tested in Destiny 2 which does not always play well with Radeon cards in general. Only reverting back to version 21H2 resolved the issue.
In the aforementioned megathread, an NVIDIA representative has been asking affected users to fill out a driver feedback form so the company can get to the bottom of the situation. Hopefully NVIDIA and Microsoft can figure out what's going on in a timely fashion.
In the meantime, if you're dead set on sticking with the 22H2 build despite running into similar issues, make sure you've updated all your drivers. We've heard from someone with a Ryzen 7 5800X, ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard, and ASUS Strix GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card that "updating some AMD stuff" and the ASUS Armoury Crate utility resolved their gaming issues.
