Nvidia suggests some graphics card issues are down to Intel CPUs

Having a harmonious relationship between your processor and graphics card is essential for smooth performance, but some PCs equipped with Intel CPUs are reportedly generating errors that look as though they’re problems with graphics cards, but appear to be down to the CPU instead. The issues are so prevalent, in fact, that Nvidia has chimed in with some direction for affected users.

Despite 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core processors being some of the best gaming CPUs on the market today, these chips are now at the center of an investigation into some Nvidia GPU instabilities. So, if your PC is rocking a blue-green component combo, listen up.

Overclockable processors, particularly the Core i9 14900K, appear to be unstable in Unreal Engine 5 games. Running the likes of Tekken 8 and Outpost: Infinity Siege with a Raptor Lake CPU is fraught with problems at the moment, with the developers of the latter even suggesting users underclock their chips to avoid crashes.

However, it appears that these CPUs may also be the root cause of other issues according to a statement by Nvidia in a feedback thread for its latest GeForce graphics driver. More specifically, the processors are implied to be responsible for some crashes during shader compilation, as well as VRAM errors.

The statement from Nvidia reads as follows:

“If your system is using an Intel 13th/14th Gen unlocked desktop CPU and is experiencing stability issues/out of video memory error messages/crash to desktop while the game is compiling shaders, please consult the following sites for troubleshooting assistance.”

The sites in question, an Intel community thread and a statement from RAD Game Tools, vary in their usefulness, with only the latter providing some potentially helpful troubleshooting steps. However, neither sire offers concrete answers for the source of these problems, instead serving as stopgap solutions while Intel conducts its investigation.

Fingers crossed these issues don’t carry across to future Intel Arrow Lake desktop processors, but we won’t know for sure until a root cause is identified. In the meantime, there’s at least plenty to look forward to from the competing Zen 5 CPUs due to arrive from AMD.