Do You Have an NVIDIA GPU and Are Losing Up to 10% FPS? The Problem Might Be This
Recently, there has been a lot of talk among PC gamers about the new NVIDIA App, concerned that installing the program could negatively affect the fluidity of their favorite titles.
The application, which combines the features of GeForce Experience and the NVIDIA Control Panel into a unified solution, allows users to update drivers, optimize game settings, manage functions like performance overlay, video recording, screenshots, and apply real-time graphical filters. However, according to an analysis conducted by TechSpot, the simple installation of the app has no measurable impact on frame rate.
TechSpot compared several configurations using a system based on the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti with 16 GB and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor. Benchmarks were conducted on Forza Horizon 6, Marvel Rivals, and Crimson Desert at a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, comparing an installation of just the graphics driver and scenarios where the NVIDIA App was installed, closed, or simply running in the background. In none of the cases was a decrease in FPS observed.
The same test was repeated with a GeForce RTX 2060, a significantly less performing GPU, yielding similar results: the presence of the application did not produce any measurable performance loss.
Even the Statistics Overlay, which displays information such as frame rate, latency, and GPU usage during gameplay, showed no appreciable effects on performance. The benchmarks highlighted comparable results with the overlay simply enabled and during real-time display of statistics, confirming the same behavior on the RTX 2060.
The situation differs for the integrated video recording. In this case, a slight reduction in performance was observed, although it was contained. On the RTX 5060 Ti, native recording at 1440p resulted in a loss of about 2 FPS in Forza Horizon 6, equivalent to about 2%, while Marvel Rivals and Crimson Desert recorded a similar drop of about 3%. On the RTX 2060, limited to hardware encoding H.264 due to the lack of AV1 support introduced with newer architectures, the recording resulted in a loss of about 1 FPS, corresponding to a 2% impact.
The element that most influences performance is, however, the graphical filters that can be applied through the NVIDIA App. In tests conducted with the RTX 5060 Ti, the RTX Dynamic Vibrance filter caused a limited loss of around 2 FPS. The combined use of the Brightness/Contrast and Color filters led to reductions between 3% and 5%, while Sharpen+ proved to be the most demanding, with drops of up to 8 FPS, equivalent to about 10% of performance in some titles. The RTX 2060 exhibited a substantially similar behavior.
TechSpot's conclusions indicate that the NVIDIA App, as well as its performance overlay, does not represent a direct cause of FPS loss. Those experiencing a drop in performance should rather check which graphic filters are active, paying particular attention to Sharpen+ and the simultaneous use of multiple post-processing effects.
The site also highlights a limitation of its analysis: parameters such as frame-time, 1% low values, and more extensive FPS recordings were not explored, elements that could potentially reveal differences in perceived smoothness even with unchanged average frame rates.