New Windows 10 update could be causing games to become unplayable

By Arif Bacchus Published April 19, 2021

If you’ve installed Windows 10’s monthly cumulative update for April and are suddenly having issues when playing your favorite games on your PC, you’re not alone.

Some gamers have taken to various social media outlets to report issues after installing the latest KB5001330 and KB5001337 updates, including stuttering, skipped frames, and other bugs with V-Sync that could make certain games unplayable.

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Microsoft has yet to officially acknowledge these issues on any of its support pages, but a Reddit thread with more than 72 comments and 64 upvotes describes the issues that the update could be causing. There’s also a thread on the Windows 10 Feedback Hub that explains the scope of the problems.

Over on Reddit, one gamer says he’s having constant stutter in Doom Eternal with an RTX 3070 graphics card and AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU. Another Reddit user mentions the same issues with an Intel Core i7-9700 processor, and a RTX 2070 Super GPU.

Yet another frustrated gamer on Reddit also complains that the issue isn’t limited to Nvidia. He reports the same problems with an AMD Radeon RX580. One user goes as far as to mention that gameplay in Forza Horizon 4 dropped from 110 frames per second to nearly 40 frames after installing this latest update.

Nvidia has seemed to become aware of the problem, while Microsoft has not made any mention of it. Nvidia said in a forum post that anyone seeing a dropped performance in games should try rolling back to Windows 10 Update KB5000842.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

As with previous known issues with Windows 10 updates, it’s likely that this issue could be limited in scope, which is why Microsoft hasn’t officially responded as of yet. However, Windows Latest reports that the update also can fail to install and cause the so-called blue screen of death error in certain situations.

If you’re having these problems, you can easily uninstall recent Windows 10 Updates (which include the problematic KB5001330 and KB5001337) in just a few steps as a remedy. Just head into Windows 10 Settings, click Update and Security, and then choose Windows Update.

From there, you can choose View Update History and see your full update history. Then, at the top of the screen, click the Uninstall Updates button and then click the KB5001330 or KB5001337 update, and choose Uninstall.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…

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