There’s Discord Amongst NVIDIA Users As VRAM Frequencies Drop
Gamers Have Long Memories About This Sort Of Thing
The newest update to Discord comes with an undesirable effect for those using NVIDIA GPUs. If you happen to have Discord running while you are gaming, whether you are streaming your game or not, you will find that your VRAM no longer runs at full speed. The amount of loss depends on what card you are using, with RTX 3xxx cards seeing a 200MHz drop and older GTX 1xxx cards losing up to 500MHz.
The performance impact on newer cards is minimal on your gaming experience, though benchmarks will certainly notice it. The older cards will see a bit of an impact, but again it wont cripple your card. Even so, the very fact this is occurring is more than troublesome for owners of NVIDIA cards who would have had no idea save for the curious mind of some technically inclined gamers. It is also worrisome that as of yet there is no explanation as to how Discord is impacting your GPU in such a way, only speculation.
NVIDIA has created a workaround using the GeForce 3D Profile Manager, which is able to block Discord’s new trick, with a proper fix coming soon.
