Nvidia’s GeForce Experience app, the longtime driver downloader, game launcher, and recording tool, is gone, and with its disappearance, some gamers have noticed a sizable hit to their performance. As reported by Tom’s Hardware, GeForce’s successor, the much less excitingly named Nvidia App, comes with a few default settings that can drain performance by up to 15%.
The news started to spread among gaming circles earlier this week, following a Dec. 5 driver update that skipped GeForce Experience in favor of the Nvidia App (all future updates will follow its lead). The new app is meant to streamline the grab bag of features Nvidia has accumulated over the years, pairing its driver updating utility with a streamlined gaming overlay and improved tools for easily optimizing graphics or enabling G-Sync and other advanced settings. However, upon installing it, some gamers noticed their games running a bit more slowly.
“We’ve confirmed reports around the web that the Nvidia App using the default settings can impact gaming performance,” writes Tom’s Hardware’s Jarred Walton, “dropping frame rates by up to 15% in some cases.”
In particular, Walton saw performance drops ranging from 2% to 12% across the games he tested, which included Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Baldur’s Gate 3, Black Myth: Wukong, Flight Simulator 2024, and Stalker 2. While user reports said the issue primarily lies in games developed in Unreal Engine 5, Walton’s biggest loser in performance was actually Assassin’s Creed, which uses a proprietary engine. Meanwhile, his instance of Wukong actually performed the best out of his tests, although still suffered some performance drops.
A potential 15% drop in performance is hefty, and can be enough to make upgrading to a new graphics card seem almost imperceptible. So what’s happening, and can you fix it?
According to continued reporting, the issue doesn’t have anything to do with the engine the game you’re playing is developed in or the app itself, but rather in some of its default settings. In other words, you can have the Nvidia App installed without a performance hit, so long as you adjust it a bit.
Specifically, both Digital Foundry and Hardware Unboxed found that their performance only dropped when the new app’s Nvidia Overlay was toggled on, and in Hardware Unboxed’s case, only with the overlay’s Game Filters and Photo Mode setting enabled. When they turned off the overlay (or that specific setting), their games functioned as well as they did prior to installing the app.
That’s both good and bad news. The overlay, summoned by pressing Alt+Z while playing a game, is where you’ll find the Nvidia App’s most useful features, including game statistics, and the game filter and photo mode option is what allows you to most customize what your graphics card puts out. To clarify, the overlay doesn’t need to be summoned to hurt performance, but just turned on in your settings.
Still, the app being OK to use otherwise does leave you open to continuing to use it to upgrade your graphics card drivers, without having to install them manually.
In a statement to Walton, Nvidia confirmed that the issue is specifically with the Game Filters and Photo Mode setting, and that the company is actively looking into a fix. So while you might not be able to play your games with an RTX HDR filter in the meantime, you’ll be able to use the rest of the app, even the overlay, as you would have before. Walton confirmed that disabling the setting does indeed work and amended his charts accordingly with new testing.
While Nvidia works on a more permanent solution, there are a few steps you can take to keep its new app from hurting your gaming performance.
The simplest solution, and probably the best one for most people, is to follow Nvidia’s official advice and turn off the Game Filters and Photo Mode setting. To do this, just navigate to Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode and toggle it off. If you’re already running a game, you’ll need to relaunch it for the change to take effect.
This will keep you from applying Nvidia’s post-processing effects to your screen (examples include “Letterboxed” and “Colorblind,” in addition to some fancier AI-powered options), as well as from using the Nvidia Photo Mode in supported games. If you’re like me, you won’t miss it, but it’s certainly a notable loss, especially given its accessibility features.
Alternatively, you could turn off the Nvidia Overlay altogether. While Hardware Unboxed said the overlay itself wasn’t contributing to most of his frame drops, he did acknowledge that there could be a “small performance impact” from running the rest of the overlay. That’s not necessarily a surprise, but it’s worth looking into if you never find yourself summoning the overlay. Turning it off will keep you from using it to record or see statistics, but you can do so from Settings > Features > Overlay if so inclined.
Finally, if you’d rather avoid this headache for good, you can still install Nvidia graphics card drivers without an app. Simply navigate to Nvidia’s website, select your graphics card from the dropdown menu, download the appropriate driver, and click on the .exe file you just downloaded. An install wizard will walk you through the rest of the process—just be sure to install “Nvidia Graphics Driver” rather than “Nvidia Graphics Driver and Nvidia App,” or else you’ll end up with the app you’re trying to avoid.
