Operating system updates are meant to improve features and performance, but sometimes they don’t. And that’s exactly what happened to Microsoft’s latest update for Windows 10, which degraded performance in games for many users, and even made Nvidia issue a comment encouraging GeForce users to roll back.
The updates in question are the KB5001330 and KB5000842, according to WindowsCentral. Microsoft apparently has acknowledged the problem and admitted that the update can indeed cause performance degradation.
“A small subset of users have reported lower than expected performance in games after installing this update,” a Microsoft statement reads. “Most users affected by this issue are running games full screen or borderless windowed modes and using two or more monitors.”
Thankfully, Microsoft’s Windows has a fairly new feature called Known Issue Rollback (KIR) that lets you remove or disable specific parts of a problematic update, rather than uninstalling the whole update, deleting all of its features, both good and bad.
A more substantive solution will no doubt arrive at some point. But for the time being, gamers frustrated with a sudden drop in their frame rates should investigate KIR for a short-term solution while we await a patch that delivers both up-to-date Windows code and expected gaming performance.