NVIDIA Is Looking Into Claims Its New App Is Crippling Game Performance
In case you missed it, NVIDIA recently began a hard push to get its slick app replacement for GeForce Experience onto more PCs. Simply called 'NVIDIA App', it exited beta and launched in polished form to the public just over four weeks ago. Be that as it may, the NVIDIA App may still need a little more polish, as reports have surfaced of degraded game performance in select titles with the application installed.
Similar to GeForce Experience, the NVIDIA App is a sort of command center for downloading driver updates, optimizing games, adjusting various settings, and so forth. Logging in is optional—there are certain benefits if you do, though it's not required—and while it's still relatively new, we like the direction NVIDIA has gone with its new app.
There might be some initial growing pains, however, which you may or may not notice while gaming.
Over on X/Twitter, Sebastian Castellanos said the app was wreaking havoc in some titles, mostly ones based on Unreal Engine 5.
"Yikes, looks like having the NVIDIA App installed was destroying perf in some of my games (mainly UE5 ones) like Black Myth: Wukong and The Talos Principle 2. Uninstalling the NVIDIA App fixed some horrendous frametime issues and gave me an extra 15%+ of performance!," he wrote.
In the discussion that followed, he clarified that he's seeing gaming performance take a hit "even with the overlay disabled." Oddly enough, he went on to say that he couldn't reproduce the results after reinstalling the app, though others chimed in with similar experiences.
"I was playing Dying Light 2 and I noticed far more stuttering with the NVIDIA App installed," a user wrote. Another user stated, "Dude. I was playing Marvel Rivals (UE5) and out of nowhere after installing the NVIDIA App I lost almost 80 fps, I was wondering wft went wrong. Maybe a game patch or my PC acting up. I might have to give this a try."
We haven't tested this ourselves (yet), but the folks at Tom's Hardware have and they claim to be seeing the same thing—up to a 15% performance hit with the app installed. It's always tricky when dealing with anecdotal experiences, but have a major publication report similar findings suggests that something is afoot.
In a post on NVIDIA's community forums, NVIDIA acknowledged the reports and said it is investigating the matter. It also offered a potential mitigation for anyone running into the issue.
"We are aware of a reported performance issue related to Game Filters and are actively looking into it. You can turn off Game Filters from the NVIDIA App Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode, and then relaunch your game," NVIDIA stated.
It would be worth giving that a try if you're having performance issues and don't want to uninstall the app outright. Hopefully an update to fix the issue, assuming one exists (and it sure seems like it does) will come soon.
