Premiere Pro v25.3 disables CUDA GPU Acceleration on GTX 1650 (regression from v25.2.3)

[animalland]

I would like to report a reproducible issue in Adobe Premiere Pro.

[Issue Description]
Starting with Premiere Pro v25.3, GPU Acceleration (Mercury Playback Engine – CUDA) becomes unavailable (grayed out) when using an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (GDDR6).

[Expected / Previous Behavior]
In Premiere Pro v25.2.3 and earlier, GPU Acceleration (CUDA) works correctly on the same system with identical hardware and drivers.

[Reproduction Environment]

• OS: Windows 11 Pro (fully updated)

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (GDDR6), single GPU configuration

• Driver: NVIDIA Studio Driver (clean installation)

• Displays: All monitors connected directly to the GTX 1650

• Premiere Pro versions tested:

  • v25.2.3 → CUDA selectable and functional

  • v25.3 → CUDA option unavailable (grayed out)

[Additional Notes]

• GPU is correctly recognized in Device Manager

• Issue occurs even in new projects

• GPU scheduling OFF, Core Isolation OFF, and other troubleshooting steps did not resolve the issue

• Premiere Pro 2024 (v24.x) works correctly on the same system

Based on these results, this appears to be a regression in GPU detection or CUDA eligibility logic introduced in Premiere Pro v25.3.

I would appreciate it if this issue could be investigated and addressed in a future update.

Thank you for your time and support.

[Ann Bens · Accepted solution]

Nope it's not a bug but rather a change in preferences for the MPE.

Don't worry, your card is working as it should.

Software rendering update 

Moved to Discussions.

[animalland]

I see, I understand. Thank you for your reply.

[R Neil Haugen]

Yea, it's a change that confuses Hades out of a lot of users ... they are moving towards not allowing deselection of the GPU by the user at all at some point, as they have stated. Not everyone is thrilled with this but the devs say the GPU is so important to so many processes that if Premiere thinks it is working correctly, they don't want the process order messed with.