If you recently replaced GeForce Experience with the Nvidia App, you may have noticed something strange in your games. In theory, this new application should make life easier for players. In practice, it does exactly the opposite: tests show that it can reduce in-game performance by 2 to 12% depending on the titles and settings, depending on the benchmarks. Tom’s Hardware.
FPS games that melt like snow in the sun
With Assassin’s Creed Mirage on an RTX 4060, the game loses up to 12% of fluidity at ultra settings at 1080p. Even less demanding games, like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Black Myth: Wukongsuffer FPS drops, ranging from 2% to 6%. It's not huge, but it's enough to make you cringe, especially when you've just spent a small fortune on a state-of-the-art graphics card.
The culprit? “Game Filters”, these “intelligent” graphics filters to improve colors or add an HDR effect to games that do not benefit from it natively. Problem: These filters are enabled by default in the Nvidia App and drain resources, even if you don't use them.
Fortunately, Nvidia has recognized the problem and is offering a temporary solution. If you want to regain your FPS, simply deactivate the famous filters. Go to the application settings (Nvidia App Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode), deactivate everything related to Game Filters, and restart your games. According to tests, this manipulation is enough to negate the impact on performance.
But why are these filters enabled by default, even though most users have never heard of them? Mystery. While waiting for a definitive fix, some even advise doing without the Nvidia App entirely by installing the drivers directly from the company's website. After all, GeForce Experience already made it possible to avoid this kind of inconvenience, and many regretted its simpler interface.
Nvidia promises an update to correct the situation, but this hiccup has not gone unnoticed. Specialized forums are full of annoyed players, some even mentioning performance losses of up to 15% on high-end configurations. This issue is a reminder that even a simple background application can have a significant impact on how well games run.
So, should you throw the Nvidia App in the trash? Not necessarily. Features like automatic game optimization or video capture remain interesting, but they come with a performance cost that few gamers are willing to accept.
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