5 Ways to Improve PC Gaming With the 'Nvidia app'

Nvidia has long offered two utilities to help GPU buyers manage their graphics cards, from settings to driver updates. But it recently merged the GeForce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel into one tool, dubbed simply the Nvidia app (yes, 'app' is lowercase). Currently in beta, it combines many of the features found in the older apps, and Nvidia says more capabilities are on the way (including all the display settings previously tucked into Control Panel).

While the new app does a reasonable job of updating the user interface, it still buries some of its best features several menus deep. Read on to learn how to get the most out of the new Nvidia app.

1. Update Drivers With Ease

Upon first launching the app, you’ll be prompted to choose between Game Ready Drivers, optimized for games, or Studio Drivers, which Nvidia says are more appropriate for creative apps like Photoshop or Adobe Premiere. Unless you’re a content creator, you’ll likely want to choose the Game Ready Driver option.

The app will regularly check for updates, then notify you when one is available (sometimes a bit too aggressively, depending on your notification settings). You can also click on the Drivers tab in the left-hand sidebar and manually scan for new updates. Click through an automated install experience or customize which elements you want to download or update, and where you want them installed. 

Nvidia also gives you the choice to do a clean install, which will remove all old drivers and data. This can come in handy if you want a cruft-free experience, though it will make it more difficult to roll back an update if an issue occurs. 

2. Build an All-in-One Launcher

Like GeForce Experience before it, the Nvidia app will serve as a unified launcher for your games, similar to how you can add non-Steam games to your Steam Library. From the home screen, you’ll see a list of installed games that can be launched with a single click, regardless of where they were purchased.

From the launcher screen, you can change individual graphics settings on a per-game basis or change global settings for all your games and apps. If you prefer not to tinker yourself, you can allow the app to automatically optimize all your games according to your hardware, though you can still tweak individual settings yourself later.

In my experience, Nvidia app only found a small handful of games installed on my machine during its first pass. In this instance, you can select the Graphics tab and open the three-dot menu. Choose the Refresh option to have the app check again or Add a program to manually add a title. You can also pick Add a scan location to expand the scan locations on your storage drive.

3. Unleash Your Inner Artist With Nvidia Overlay

In-game photo modes have become increasingly popular in AAA PC games. But Nvidia made it so you don't have to rely on these features by releasing its own game-agnostic photo tool called Ansel, which has been ported into the Nvidia app.

To access photo mode, press Alt-Z in a supported game to launch Nvidia Overlay, a menu that includes options to record gameplay, view an instant replay, take screenshots, and open photo mode. Choose Photo mode to work with the tool's filters and capture super-resolution, 360-degree, HDR, and stereo professional-grade photographs.

In my experience, the overlay tools are easily comparable to—or better than—most dedicated in-game photo modes. Despite being a third-party tool, it doesn’t add much overhead to your game, so it won’t significantly affect performance. The inclusion of support for RTX HDR tech—which lets you add HDR to scenes that don’t natively include it and do some frankly remarkable things with color—is particularly impressive.

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The filter options are where the Overlay really shines. Imagine having a giant toolkit of Instagram filters and Photoshop effects to apply to live gameplay at any time. Freestyle lets you completely transform the look of a game on the fly, and then adjust it to your preferred aesthetic. Add noir atmosphere by making your game black and white, give it a cartoonish cel-shaded makeover, or even create a bespoke split screen mode in games where it's not natively supported.

4. Enable Statistics for a Performance Deep Dive

Another useful feature of the Overlay is the optional Statistics display, which provides a wealth of tools and information you can access without having to tab out. Press Alt-Z to launch the Overlay, then select Statistics from the bottom to customize what game performance data should be displayed. This allows you to see what effect your current settings have on your system, and includes everything from GPU temperature and voltage to fan speed and CPU utilization. 

You can also customize the appearance of the Statistics heads-up display here, turn on logging for your performance stats, and launch Nvidia’s Reflex Analyzer. The latter uses the company’s Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT) to measure input latency, which is especially important for playing fighting games or competitive online multiplayer titles. The Statistics screen can then be toggled on and off at any time by pressing Alt-R. 

5. Use Image Scaling to Squeeze Out More FPS

Tucked into the Global Settings tab of the Graphics menu is another option for extracting as many frames per second as possible from your games in the form of Image Scaling. This technique allows you to render games at lower resolution, and then upscale them, so you get sharper images with less performance cost.

The Image Scaling panel lets you choose your game resolution, and also provides a slider to adjust the sharpness of resulting images. While it’s not as robust as Nvidia’s similar DLSS technology, it does not require any specific hardware or SDK integrations to function, making it more broadly applicable.