2025 will be my 10th year working in the technology industry. During that time, I’ve created and documented hundreds of custom PC builds, benchmarked hundreds of products, and installed a new OS on every system I use. This does not include reinstallation on your own machine.
I can tell you now that at the time, nothing infuriated me more than the GeForce Experience. It may sound quite pretentious to suddenly publish an opinion piece like this, but if you think about it seriously, programs are becoming more complex, less useful, and generally more cumbersome to deal with. It just became. Over the years. That Nvidia app was discontinued this year and replaced with the Nvidia app, and while I was wary and exhausted at first, I soon found myself filled with joy.
Why is Nvidia’s GeForce Experience (GFE) important? Well, most of the time it felt a little dirty. When GFE was first introduced, it was very simple. A desktop program that just suggests some settings for the game (which I would ignore right away) and some update recommendations to get new drivers (the most cutting-edge ones), oh, and ShadowPlay. It was. , to be honest, this was largely ignored by gamers.
Over time, GFE changed to require an Nvidia account to log in. why? That’s a good question. I don’t know yet, but that login didn’t transfer anything from machine to machine, and furthermore, the app didn’t store any personal information. So, Nvidia, why did you need to log me in? That remains a mystery.
Then the captcha appeared – unfortunately, the captcha. Select the square with the traffic light. Great, thank you. Does the pole count as a traffic light? There’s also a traffic light corner in that square, but does that count? No, try again (ah).
Finally, email notifications are now provided instead of sign-in, which is probably a dramatic improvement as a result. It’s all about driver update notifications. wonderful.
How bad did it get? I actively recommended that almost everyone in the PC gaming space not install GFE on their machines. I handled this exactly the same way I would when using third party antivirus software, but it’s just not worth it. I’ve never installed GFE on my rig, that’s for sure. After completing a build or updating on my PC, I would go directly to Nvidia’s website and download the driver directly and install it without installing GeForce Experience, but I occasionally receive new drivers every month or so. I was checking. Life was good.
Then I had a chance to check out AMD’s Adrenalin software. And I was really impressed. From stats to settings to driver updates, the behavior was (and still is) incredible. There’s no way Nvidia is sitting on a treasure trove of features when its competitors (especially those struggling with GPU market share) are making so much progress with apps.
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GeForce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel in one
With the release of the Nvidia app (what the hell is that called, guys, quit it) and, as mentioned above, the end of GeForce Experience, I was nervous at first, but quickly elated. This was everything I wanted from a decent GPU controlled app. It almost feels weird to say this, but it was great to see Team Green finally catch up to AMD.
The Nvidia app not only takes full advantage of the GeForce Experience (which was pretty much empty), but also embraces the ridiculously outdated Windows XP-like Nvidia Control Panel and incorporates some of the most commonly used features. Ta. It’s all wrapped up in a nice little package, and thankfully no login is required. Or capture! (You can also log in if you want, but I’m not sure why you would do that).
In almost all scenarios, Nvidia apps are a major upgrade. Check for driver updates and notifications. Check the game’s graphics settings (for those who don’t want to mess with settings). Check your monitor control options. There are also features here to overclock your GPU and monitor in-game statistics. Nice.
Sadly, for those who need more detailed adjustments (for example, if you’re a lunatic who needs to adjust your monitor’s color settings and other sophisticated 3D settings), that old-fashioned control center link There are still, but it’s not the end of the world.
However, the Nvidia app is not perfect and there is still room for improvement. Go to the (Home) tab and you’ll see links to Nvidia Broadcast, ICAT, FrameView, and GeForce Now. These act as sublinks of sorts, allowing you to go to a download page or open the program directly from there, but when fully integrated they make Nvidia apps even more powerful.
At this point, Nvidia is just catching up to AMD (which still feels very weird to say), and there’s nothing that sets this app apart. It’s a nice update for those who already use Nvidia, but nothing more. Nvidia apps are only limited in what you can do with them. Still, I think we should all be thankful that that damn traffic light is gone, at least for now.
That’s what I’m really worried about. Perhaps Team Green has finally realized that GeForce Experience isn’t getting as many sign-ins as it used to. We good PC folks avoided that bullet entirely and chose to download just the bare graphics driver without the weird green little add-on package in tow. Presumably all this is to get you to download this shiny new thing with some bonuses, and six months later it’s like, “Log in, oh, and by the way, identify these bikes.” Maybe it’s a cunning ploy. . Wrong! Please try again.
