Performance issue with Intel UHD driver 27.20.100.9664

In November, my Latitude 7310 was updated with the latest release of the Intel UHD graphics driver (version 27.20.100.9664). In my work environment, I make use of NoMachine over a VPN connection to access certain machines. This has worked fine for me for years. I recently started observing significant performance problems (pixelization and poor screen refresh) with NoMachine that rendered it basically unusable. After a significant amount of troubleshooting, I believe I have isolated the problem to the new Intel UHD graphics driver. The following is a summary of the troubleshooting steps.

• Poor performance started relatively recently (i.e. within the last few weeks)
• Dell released the updated Intel UHD graphics driver on 22 Sep.
• This updated driver was applied to my laptop on 15 Nov
• With the new driver and hardware decoding enabled on the NoMachine client, significant pixelization and poor screen refresh was noted.
• With the new driver and hardware decoding enabled on the client, GPU utilization (as reported by Windows Task Manager) hovered around 70% for NoMachine. This seems very high to me.
• With the new driver and hardware decoding disabled on the client, normal operation was observed (i.e. no pixelization)
• With the new driver and hardware decoding disabled on the client, GPU utilization dropped to almost zero (as expected), and CPU utilization increased noticeably (also as expected).
• With the previous driver (version 27.20.100.8681) and hardware decoding enabled, normal operation was noted.
• With the previous driver and hardware decoding enabled, GPU utilization was 15-20%, with occasional spikes to about 40%.

I feel that there is some issue with this new graphics driver...at least in the way NoMachine is using it.

I would appreciate any feedback on other experiences with this driver release and perhaps what steps should be taken next.

Matt