This Nvidia App Tweak Reduces Frame Rates
Nvidia’s GeForce Experience app, a longtime tool for downloading drivers, launching games, and recording, has disappeared, and with its disappearance, some gamers have noticed a significant drop in performance. As Tom’s Hardware reports, GeForce’s successor, Nvidia’s app with a much less exciting name, has several default settings that can reduce performance by up to 15%.
This news started making the rounds in gaming circles earlier this week following the December 5 driver update that replaced GeForce Experience with an Nvidia app (all future updates will follow suit). The new app is designed to optimize the feature set Nvidia has amassed over the years, combining a driver update utility with an optimized gaming overlay and improved tools to easily optimize graphics or enable G-Sync and other advanced settings. However, after installing it, some gamers noticed that their games ran a little slower.
“We’ve confirmed reports online that an Nvidia app using default settings may impact game performance,” writes Tom’s Hardware’s Jarred Walton, “with frame rates dropping by up to 15% in some cases.”
Specifically, Walton saw performance drops ranging from 2% to 12% across all the games he tested, including Assassin’s Creed Mirage , Baldur’s Gate 3 , Black Myth: Wukong , Flight Simulator 2024 , and Stalker 2 . While user reports say the problem primarily occurs in games developed on Unreal Engine 5, Walton’s biggest performance hit was actually Assassin’s Creed , which uses a custom engine. Meanwhile, its Wukong instance actually performed the best in its tests, although performance still suffered a bit.
A potential 15% drop in performance is significant, and could be enough to make upgrading to a new graphics card seem almost unnoticeable. So what’s going on and can it be fixed?
Is the Nvidia app affecting your gaming performance?
According to ongoing reports, the problem is not related to the engine on which the game you are playing is developed or to the application itself, but rather to some of its default settings. In other words, you can install an Nvidia app without any performance degradation if you tweak it a bit.
Specifically, both Digital Foundry and Hardware Unboxed found that their performance only suffered when the new app had Nvidia Overlay enabled, and in the case of Hardware Unboxed, only when the game filters and photo overlay settings were enabled. When they turned off the overlay (or that particular setting), their games worked the same as before installing the app.
This is both good and bad news. The overlay, brought up by pressing Alt+Z while gaming, is where you’ll find the Nvidia app’s most useful features, including game stats, while the game filter and photo mode option are where you can customize your graphics card to the max. spreads. To clarify: Overlay does not need to be called to reduce performance, it just needs to be enabled in the settings.
However, the application is otherwise usable, but you can continue to use it to update your graphics card drivers without having to install them manually.
In a statement to Walton, Nvidia confirmed that the issue was specifically related to game filter and photo mode settings, and that the company is actively looking for a solution. So while you won’t be able to play games with the RTX HDR filter just yet, you’ll be able to use the rest of the app, even the overlay, as before. Walton confirmed that disabling this setting did work and adjusted his charts accordingly in new testing.
How to fix Nvidia app
While Nvidia is working on a more permanent solution, there are a few steps you can take to ensure the new app doesn’t degrade your gaming performance.
The simplest solution, and probably the best for most people, is to follow Nvidia’s official advice and turn off the Game Filters and Photo Mode settings. To do this, simply go to Settings > Features > Overlays > Game Filters & Photo Mode and turn it off. If you are already running the game, you will have to restart it for the changes to take effect.
This will prevent you from applying Nvidia’s post-processing effects to the screen (examples include “Letterboxed” and “Colorblind”, in addition to some more interesting AI-powered options), or using Nvidia’s Photo Mode in supported games. If you’re like me, you won’t miss it, but it’s certainly a noticeable loss, especially given the accessibility features.
Alternatively, you can disable Nvidia Overlay altogether. While Hardware Unboxed stated that the overlay itself does not contribute to the majority of frame drops, it admitted that running the rest of the overlay may have a “small impact on performance.” This isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it’s worth noting if you never call an overlay. If you turn it off, you won’t be able to use it to record or view stats, but you can do so in Settings > Features > Overlay if you want.
Finally, if you want to avoid this headache forever, you can still install Nvidia graphics card drivers without an app. Simply go to the Nvidia website , select your graphics card from the drop-down menu, download the appropriate driver, and click the .exe file you just downloaded. The installation wizard will walk you through the rest of the process—just be sure to install “Nvidia Graphics Driver” and not “Nvidia Graphics Driver and Nvidia Application,” otherwise you’ll end up with the application you’re trying to avoid. .