Nvidia blames Microsoft's Windows 11 KB5066835 for performance issues, hotfix driver out

This month both Nvidia and AMD released driver updates optimized for the latest Call of Duty game, Black Ops 7. The drivers were released as versions 581.80 on GeForce and 25.11.1 on Radeon, respectively. With the latter, AMD debuted its new FSR Ray Regeneration "Redstone" tech in the game. We will have an analysis for it soon, so stay tuned.

Earlier today, on top of the GeForce driver 581.80, Nvidia has now released a hotfix driver. The AI giant (ahem!) has confirmed performance issues in several games and the company has put the blame on the latest October 2025 Windows 11 Patch Tuesday update from Microsoft. The KB5066835 update for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2 is said to be the culprit. The company writes:

"GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 581.94 is based on our latest Game Ready Driver 581.80. This Hotfix addresses the following:

• Lower performance may be observed in some games after updating to Windows 11 October 2025 KB5066835"

Nvidia does not specify which exact games are impacted by this but it is probably safe to assume that includes Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and there can be some other popular titles included too like Battlefield 6. We also checked on Microsoft's known issues list for Windows on the Health Dashboard website but Redmond does not say anything about this.

A user says: "Tested on Blops7, BF6, and Arc Raiders tonight. Seems a lot smoother." Others on the thread are also wondering about other titles and their respective issues, but nothing as of yet has been provided.

In order to download the new hotfix GeForce driver version 581.94, head over to this page on Nvidia's official website. Please note that this hotfix driver is a beta as it is an emergency release. If you are not encountering any gaming issues in the titles you play, it is better to wait for the WHQL driver release later.

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Posted Friday 21 November 2025 at 3:57 am AEST (my time).

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