[AGGIORNATA] The NVIDIA app slows games by up to 15%, but there’s a fix

Update December 17th

NVIDIA released a statement saying that be aware of the problem. Luckily there is one simple solution: just disable a function to regain lost FPS, a much more convenient method than completely uninstalling the app. Below is the full statement:

We are aware of a reported performance issue related to Game Filters and are actively investigating it. You can disable Game Filters from the Nvidia app Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode, and then restart the game.

Original article

It seems that NVIDIA has a big problem, just a few weeks before the launch of the new RTX 5000 graphics cards, expected at CES in Las Vegas. According to what has emerged in the last few hours, the new NVIDIA App, which took the place of GeForce Experience, would cause a performance degradation in games, with an impact up to 15%.

Colleagues at Tom’s Hardware USA have carried out some tests in this regard, which we report below; benchmarks highlight the issue, which appears to affect both modern DX12 games developed in Unreal Engine 5, and titles that use DirectX 11, such as Baldur’s Gate 3.

In particular, using a RTX 4060 performance drops have been noted between 2% and 12% over five games tested. The biggest impact was seen in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which showed drops of up to 12%.

The severity of the problem varies depending on the games and hardware configurations: some users have reported drops of up to 15% with very high-end cards, such as the RTX 4080 Super. It is not yet clear whether this is a coincidence, or whether the impact is actually greater on more powerful GPUs.

How to solve the problem (waiting for a fix)

NVIDIA has not yet intervened on the issue, neither with an official comment, nor with an update capable of solving the problem. For the moment, therefore, the only solution is to carry out one clean installation of drivers and exclude the NVIDIA app when choosing.

In this way you lose all the excellent features of the app, from the overlay to the driver update, but you gain in performance. And if you are a gamer, this is probably the aspect that interests you most: getting the most out of your video card, as it should be.