The Nvidia App is damaging frame rates in some games, on some PCs, with Nvidia staffers recommending you nix the Game Filters overlay as a potential solution to the problem

HardwareThe Nvidia App is damaging frame rates in some games, on some PCs, with Nvidia staffers recommending you nix the Game Filters overlay as a potential solution to the problemWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Nvida)

Nvidia logo on a chip

Recent reports have surfaced suggesting the newNvidia App, fresh out of beta, is harming the gaming performance of some PCs. We’ve conducted some of our own testing, with up to a 12% frame rate hit on one PC, and no performance issues on another. But if you do find yourself with an issue, there at least looks to be a temporary fix that doesn’t mean you have to uninstall the application altogether.

When the Nvidia app launched last month, it followed on from a successful beta period where the app was praised for not requiring a sign-in function, and for replacing Nvidia’s other apps like GeForce Experience and, eventually, the Nvidia Control Panel.

Yesterday,following claims on X, that games were running slower with the Nvidia App installed, I have tested the main offender itself—Black Myth Wukong—to see what the performance hit looks like on my own system. After a bit of a false start and a tweaking of my methodology, I’ve certainly been able to note instances where there are definite slow downs because of having the Nvidia App running on my rig.

With myRyzen 7 7800X3DandRTX 4070 Superpowered machine, all on very high settings with Frame Generation turned off, I initially gotan everage 59 fps with a minimum of 49 and a maximum of 67 inBlack Myth: Wukong. Using that touted fix of turning off overlays, that number got up to an average 63 fps, with a minimum of 47 and a maximum of 72. Through multiple runs, on very high, I got an average of 4 fps more in the average fps section, and 5 fps more average in the minimum fps section.

The same can be spotted in my 1080p testing with Frame Generation on, which got an average of 89 fps with the overlay on and 96 fps with the overlay off. The biggest disparity, however, was when I knocked the graphics settings back to Medium, which put less strain on the GPU and potentially highlights the extra CPU load the app is having. This is where we saw a hefty 12% frame rate drop from having the overlay enabled.

Testing at 1440p showed no notable difference between having the overlay on or off when Frame Generation was turned off but a slight decrease with it on.

After running through all these tests, I retested 1080p on very high settings after entirely uninstalling the app and noticed no difference between that setup and just disabling the overlay, suggesting turning off the filters does seem to fix this problem.

However, we also tested performance inCyberPunk 2077on a Core Ultra 9 285K, 32 GB DDR5-7800, RTX 4080 Super rig, with the overlay on, off, app closed, and app uninstalled, and got the same basic frame rates in every test. That does seem to highlight that it’s going to be very game specific in terms of whether you have a performance hit or not.

It’s important to note that this is the first real hiccup the Nvidia App has seen since itlaunched back in November. A competent replacement for GeForce Experience, I was glad to see an app that combines driver acquisition, alongside a whole host of graphics and system settings customization. Though it’s worth noting that you can—and always have been able to—get graphics drivers without ever getting the app itself.

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