It appears that many gamers believe the Nvidia App sucks because installing or using it costs performance. That was the theme of many comments left on our previous article about how to configure the Nvidia App for the best experience. Granted, only some of the comments focused on this, but many people seem to believe that avoiding the Nvidia App is better than using it. We saw comments calling the app bloated garbage, claiming it creates stutters in games, and saying the overlay is a performance hog.
We've been using the Nvidia App across a range of test systems and personal gaming rigs, and we've never encountered any serious performance issues. We don't believe the Nvidia App hurts performance. If anything, having to use the slow and outdated Nvidia Control Panel is more of a hindrance, given how long it takes to respond to inputs or setting changes.
But this isn't something we've explored in detail. We've simply installed the Nvidia App and gotten on with life. Could this software actually be slowing down a PC? Are the commenters right? That's what we want to find out today.
We're not just going to examine whether having the Nvidia App installed or uninstalled affects performance. The Nvidia App also includes features such as the performance overlay, video recording, and in-game filters, so we thought it would be useful to explore the performance impact of those features as well.
