Nvidia App was caught slowing down video cards – in some games FPS dropped by 12-15%

Last month, Nvidia released an updated driver package for its graphics accelerators. Along with it, the Nvidia App was released, which became a replacement for the considered obsolete GeForce Experience. Now it has become known that a new Nvidia application can reduce system performance in games, and in some cases up to 15% of performance is lost.

Image source: NVIDIA

Users are encouraged to install the Nvidia App the first time they launch GeForce Experience after downloading GeForce Game Ready Driver 566.14, which began distribution last month. You can choose not to download this software, but it is important to understand that there will be no new versions of GeForce Experience released in the future. With the release of driver package version 566.36, Nvidia completely got rid of GeForce Experience, leaving only the Nvidia App. Therefore, users will have to install this application or opt out of using the additional features it offers by installing only the drivers.

Image source: Tomshardware.com

It is noted that in some cases the use of Nvidia App gave positive results. For example, Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 had slight performance improvements, but within the margin of error. In other cases, the absence of the Nvidia App contributed to improved gaming performance. We expected this to be most noticeable when using medium settings and 1080p resolution, but it turns out that the performance drop is largely independent of the selected resolution. Although testing was done using a single graphics card, there is clearly an issue with performance degradation when using the Nvidia App.

According to some reports, games based on the Unreal Engine 5 suffered the most. According to the source, the worst situation is in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, where performance fell by 9% at 1080p resolution and medium quality settings, by 12% at 1080p resolution and maximum settings and by 6% at 1440p resolution and maximum settings. In Stalker 2, the figures decreased by almost 6%, and in Black Myth: Wukong – by 2-6%. Baldur’s Gate 3 with DirectX 11 lost 3-4% performance, and Flight Simulator 2024 lost 6% when running at 1080p resolution.

Image source: Tomshardware.com

It’s safe to say that the performance loss will vary depending on the different processors and graphics cards that are installed in users’ PCs. One user reported a 15% performance drop in Black Myth: Wukong when tested with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card. It may turn out that higher-performing accelerators will suffer more from this problem.

Official representatives of Nvidia have not yet commented on this issue. They are expected to study the problem in detail to try to fix it. Until this happens, users may want to avoid installing the Nvidia App and limit themselves to downloading the driver package.