Nvidia's New App: A Hidden Drain on Gaming Performance

Nvidia recently launched a new unified app to replace their old GeForce Experience. While the change brought a welcome end to the need for an account login, it's now causing some unexpected issues. Recent tests show that this new app can significantly lower frame rates in many high-end games, even when it's just running in the background. Tom's Hardware found out about this problem after noticing complaints online. They tested the app with an RTX 4060 and discovered that it reduced average frame rates by 3 to 6 percent across five different games. The biggest drop was seen in Assassin's Creed Mirage, with a 12 percent decrease at 1080p Ultra settings. Other games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Black Myth: Wukong also showed similar, though smaller, drops. This might not seem like much, but it's a big deal. It's like downgrading from a top-of-the-line RTX 4070 Ti Super to an older model. And for an app that's supposed to be quietly running in the background, that's a lot of performance to lose.