Windows users who have installed the October 2025 updates for the operating system may have noticed a lower than usual performance in certain games according to reports.
While Microsoft has not confirmed the gaming issue officially, as it does not list a single known issue for Windows 11 at the time of writing, Nvidia has noticed and released a hotfix to address the issue.
Nvidia's description of the issue is vague, as it does not list any games by name or the exact issue, other than lower performance, that users may experience: "Lower performance may be observed in some games after updating to Windows 11 October 2025 KB5066835 [5561605]".
However, the release of a hotfix usually means that the issue is widespread or serious enough to warrant an out-of-bounds release of a new driver for Nvidia video cards.
A new hotfix driver -- GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 581.94 -- is now available for supported Nvidia video cards that address the issue, according to Nvidia's report. It is based on the recently released Game Ready Driver 581.80, which Nvidia released in early November to improve support for new games such as Anno 117: Pax Romana.