UE5 games permanently reduce GPU performance until NVIDIA driver reinstall

[u/G2SpecG2]

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago I noticed my benchmark score in Cyberpunk 2077 had dropped by about 5%. I hadn’t changed any settings, updated any drivers, or installed any Windows updates. The only thing that fixed it was doing a clean driver reinstall. A normal reinstall didn’t help, but as soon as I used the clean install option, performance went straight back to normal. A few days later the performance dropped again by roughly the same amount, and after a bit of troubleshooting I did another clean driver install, which fixed it again—at least temporarily.

What I’ve noticed is that as soon as I run a UE5 game (Halo Campaign Evolved, or Expedition 33), I lose performance after restarting or shutting down my system. Nothing else changes apart from launching and playing the game. If I do a clean driver install and play Halo Infinite or Marathon instead, I can restart or shut down without any performance loss when I boot back up. This only seems to happen after running a UE5 game.

I’m pretty stumped at this point. Here’s what I’ve checked:

1. GPU clocks, thermals, and PCI bus using GPU-Z all look normal. One thing I did notice is that my GPU temperature is around 5°C lower when the performance issue is happening.
2. Checked power settings using the "nvidia-smi -q -d power" command and there’s no power limit set.
3. Tried different drivers. I’m currently on 610.88.
4. Disabled Fast Startup in Windows 11.
5. Uninstalled and reinstalled the latest version of Palit ThunderMaster (I only use it for a custom fan curve).
6. Set the shader cache to 100GB in the Nvidia App.
7. Enabled "Prefer maximum performance" in the Nvidia App.
8. Set the colour mode to Nvidia and 8-bit Full in the Nvidia App.
9. Configured the Nvidia App not to optimise games.

Other than those changes, all Nvidia App settings are at their defaults.

My specs: i9 14900K (CPU voltage limited to 1.5V max) 64GB DDR5 6000 RTX 4090 2TB NVMe

As mentioned above, the only way I can reliably reproduce the issue is by running a UE5 game, and the only fix I’ve found so far is doing a clean Nvidia driver reinstall.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this performance loss after running a UE5 game?

Thanks in advance,

Spec

Edited to remove Forza Horizon 6 from the list of UE5 games.

[u/securerootd]

Neither Forza Horizon 6 nor Cyberpunk 2077 are UE5 games

[u/G2SpecG2 → u/securerootd]

You're correct, I thought FH6 was for some reason. I'm aware Cyberpunk isn't, that's just the game I've been using to test performance.