Microsoft has finally fixed one of the longest standing bugs in Windows 11 – visual distortions when playing videos in Chromium-based browsers.

Windows 11 June 2024 cumulative update includes several interesting improvements, including a new Microsoft account manager in the Start menu.

In our tests, Windows Latest observed that this month’s update (KB5039212) also fixes visual distortions (checkerboard) when playing videos in Chrome or Edge.

If you have a PC with Nvidia graphics, you might have noticed visual distortions or poor video playback performance when playing videos in Chromium-based browsers, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. This issue is likely related to Chromium’s power management.

One user previously told me that they experienced checkerboard (visual artefacts) on Windows 11 PCs with GPUs like RTX 4070. In some cases, setting “Prefer maximum performance” in the Nvidia Control Panel fixed the issue, but it also significantly increased power usage.t

This bug has been mostly limited to specific hardware or use cases.

“The bug doesn’t appear on my rig with a 12900k/4090, but I disabled ASPM in the BIOS and set power management to ‘high performance’ with some tweaks. It seems to be a Windows bug, as the OS manages this via the driver,” one of the affected users noted in a Nvidia forum post.

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge’s checkerboard issue isn’t new. It’s been around for several months now.

In fact, I first saw the reports almost a year ago. In some rare cases, it also affected Windows PCs without Nvidia graphics, causing performance issues when playing videos in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other browsers.

Thankfully, the Windows 11 KB5039212 has finally fixed the bug, and I’ve verified the patch on my device.

Microsoft has also quietly acknowledged the fixes in the support document.

“This update addresses an issue that distorts parts of the screen,” Microsoft noted in a support document. “This occurs when you use a Chromium-based browser to play a video”.

We don’t know how Microsoft patched the performance issues with Chromium, but it turns out this issue was something only Microsoft could fix by making changes to Windows 11.

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