Uh oh, the new Nvidia App can tank your game performance

When the Nvidia App launched last month, it looked like a universal improvement over GeForce Experience. (Finally, no more login required for driver updates and game optimizations!) Unfortunately, it now appears that this new software has its own problems, with users reporting performance drops of up to 15 percent in games — and testing by Tom’s Hardware shows the issue really does exist.

First published on Monday, benchmarks show performance dips that vary based on the game. The most dramatic was Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which lost 12 percent at 1080p Ultra and 6 percent at 1440p Ultra on an RTX 4060 with the Nvidia App at default settings. While not quite the 15 percent hit in Black Myth: Wukong that was reported by one user with an RTX 4080 Super and AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Jarred Walton of Tom’s Hardware hypothesizes that enthusiast GPUs could be affected more strongly by this bug.

Nvidia has since issued a response to Tom’s Hardware’s request for comment, saying the issue appears rooted in having Game Filters and Photo Mode enabled in the app. With these on, they can impact game performance even when not in use for the active title.

Nvidia currently suggests temporarily disabling these two options to restore performance as the company works on a fix, which Tom’s Hardware has confirmed as a functional workaround. Alternatively, affected users can uninstall the Nvidia App and instead manually install drivers to stay up to date.

You can dive deeper into the Tom’s Hardware testing in the article linked above, which covers benchmarks at 1080p Medium and Ultra and 1440p Ultra in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Baldur’s Gate 3, Black Myth: Wukong, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Stalker 2, along with the average across those five games.

In the meantime, if you’re still using GeForce Experience and thinking you’ve bypassed this sticky situation — that’s a yes and a no. No performance hit, sure, but you’re now stuck on older drivers. Version 566.14 of the drivers are the last set of drivers installable through GFE. For the latest updates (566.36 as of this writing), you must navigate this Nvidia App wonkiness or install the drivers yourself.