Dear forum members,
we experience a serious memory leak when continuously updating a 2D texture displaying a live image from a physical camera. From some version of NVIDIA graphics drivers on this process continuously eats CPU memory away finally resulting in an ‘out of memory’ situation.
Details are as following:
Driver versions we tested that show the problem: 573.42, 576.02, 576.52, 576.61
Graphics hardware we tested: A400, T400, P400
Windows 11 OS, but issue also shows on Win10 using same driver versions. We have drivers for Win10 not showing the problem but these are not compatible with Win11, so this problem currently prevents us from delivering Win11 to customers.
Technique used is OpenGL, using glTexImage2D() or glTexSubImage2D(), behavior does not change when switching between creating a new texture for each camera image or reusing existing one.
We did not change relevant application software, just changing driver versions causes the problem. Last known driver version we know of not showing the problem is 475.14
Problem does not show on NVIDIA RTX 2080 with same driver versions.
I am attaching NVIDIA system information exported on a system showing the problem
NVIDIA System Information 06-30-2025 15-50-20.txt (3.4 KB)
Any help on this issue is greatly appreciated since customers are urgently asking for Win11 updates.
Hello @michael.hardwiger, welcome to the NVIDIA developer forums.
I will try to reach out to the GL team if they have some input on this. Meanwhile, would you be able to narrow down the driver version a bit? 475.14 to 573.423 is a rather big gap.
Also, if you would have a minimal repro app, that would be even better to replicate the issue in-house, in case it really is an NVIDIA driver issue.
Thanks!
Hello @MarkusHoHo,
we narrowed the driver version down from the version 553.62 (R550 U13) which showed no memory leak to version 572.16 (R570 U1) which showed the memory leak. We tested the drivers on a RTX A6000. The drivers were downloaded via the manual search for the RTX A6000 on your website.
Development of the repro app will take some time as there are hardware requirements (camera) in our program. We are also using OpenCascade (7.5) to create the OpenGL textures.
We’ll get back to you when it’s ready.
Hello @MarkusHoHo,
our minimal reproduction code is ready.
We got a Visual Studio 17 solution at this github repository.
Just open the solution and compile and run the code.
All of the dependencies are checked into the repository and don’t need to be compiled.
When testing with the T400 the memory jumped a lot and you might need some time to see the memory go up in the Task Manager. Setting the Priority for the programm to high seemed to help decreasing the spikes so you can concentrate on the memory leak.
We also tested the programm on a laptop NVIDIA GPU where the memory seemed to calm down after a while and start leaking memory slowly but constantly. The laptop also had an Intel iGPU which seemed to work fine without the memory moving, as long as all monitors are connected to the iGPU.
For the program, it’s a slightly changed Version of the OpenCascade Viewer2D example, loading a bmp file every 5ms and printing it on a document.
Hope it helps.
Hello @MarkusHoHo , we also have same memory leak problem. This problem came with NVIDIA Graphics Driver 572.16 (32.0.15.7216) version. Unfortunately we couldn’t get rid of this memory leak problem even though we upgraded each new version including the newest one.
Hello @MarkusHoHo ,
are there any news regarding the memory leak?
Is there anything else we could do to help?
Hello everyone, I also had memory leak driver.
@MarkusHoHo
I am a Unity Developer, and when I tried to open big Unity project - my non-pooled memory filled very fast, until all 32gb all was used, when ssd and when comlete pc freeze. (around 1-5 minutes to freeze from start)
It started from 576.88 version (i need to update drivers for Battlefield 6). (I have Win11, 3080 10Gb, 32 GB RAM, 1Tb SSD)
Not sure if it is the same memory leak as topic starter have, but I don’t really know the real reson.
In attachments there are poolmon screenshots, where we can see that nvidia driver have leak.
After research (at that moment i thought that the problem in new windows updates) and rolled back to the old driver version the problem disappears (rolled to old 572.83 for sure) - so the real problem is new drivers (even after update to the latest drivers 581.29 didn’t fix my problem)
Hope you find the solution.
(can’t attach all of the screenshots, so here is the google drive link: nvidia_leak_poolmon - Google Drive )
Hi all,
I cannot provide any update I am afraid. The OpenGL team is aware, but not more I can share right now.
Hi,
We manged to reproduce the memory leak with a minimal OpenGL texture rendering example.
The source code for that is in the attached zip file.
It includes a python script to log the RAM usage during the usage to a sqlite database.
Analyzing the data show that the driver leaks memory at a rate of 10-30 kB per second.
The leak happens in both the OpenGL core and compatibility profile at the same rate.
Due to how easy it is to reproduce the issue, a larger number of applications should be affected by it.
We also tested the mesa zink driver from GitHub - pal1000/mesa-dist-win: Pre-built Mesa3D drivers for Windows and confirmed that the leak doesn’t happen when using it.
OpenGL-Rendering-Test.zip (15.8 MB)
hello everyone, in our company leak is confirmed on many different NVIDIA cards (A400, A1000, A4000, 4000-ADA, 2000-ADA) probably more also!
Same for us, latest stable version is 553.62 and every driver after have the leak problem, latest tested is 581.80.
A solution from NVIDIA would be greatly appreciated, due to other programs we sometimes cannot downgrade driver to 553.62.
Thank you!