Windows 11 21H2, the latest launch of the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system, seems to be on track. Following some reported performance issues with Virtualization Based Security (VBS) enabled, users of NVIDIA graphics cards are complaining of significant performance drops when running overlays.
When we dive into the details, the video games work properly when the user launches them without further delay. However, if you choose to press “alt+R”. check out the performance you’re getting through the GeForce Experience overlay, you’ll start to feel significant stutter and possibly sound errors. Some have reported an 87.5% loss in frames per second in titles like God of War Nordic after displaying the overlay. In some extreme cases, the situation has led to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), which, when it appears, means you need to restart your computer because Windows has suffered a fatal error.
The logical thing to think is that closing the overlay will return the game to its previous state, restoring the lost performance after waiting for a while, but apparently not everyone finds this and more than one, to get back the gaming experience you are used to, they had to close the game and go to the GeForce Experience settings, where they completely disable the overlays. It is not yet clear whether the origin is in the operating system or in the driver, but all affected users reported that it appeared after updating to Windows 11 21H2.
Fortunately, NVIDIA seems to be aware of the issue and has responded appropriately. What’s more, even an employee of the company was seen on Reddit to collect data and information to help solve this as soon as possible. Microsoft’s involvement cannot be ruled out depending on the green giant’s findings, so the solution may eventually have to come from both sides, with updates to Windows 11 and NVIDIA drivers.
In case you are an NVIDIA user experiencing this issue on Windows 11 21H2, we strongly recommend disabling overlays until fixes are released. We recommend that you open Windows Update and the NVIDIA Driver Update Tool once they are available and apply them.
