2025 marks a decade of me working in the tech industry. In that time, I've concocted and documented hundreds of custom PC builds and benchmarked hundreds more products, each time installing a fresh OS on every system I use – and that doesn't include reinstalls on my own rigs.
I can tell you now, nothing infuriated me more than GeForce Experience during that time. That might sound like quite the hyperbolic statement to launch an opinion piece like this, right out of the gate, but seriously – it was a program that just got more convoluted, less useful, and generally more of a pain in the ass to deal with over the years. With its retirement and replacement with the Nvidia App this year, I was at first cautiously weary, but soon enough, found myself filled with glee.
Why the big beef with Nvidia's GeForce Experience (GFE)? Well, mostly it just felt a bit grubby. When GFE was first introduced, it was simple enough – just a desktop program that would suggest some settings for games (which I'd promptly ignore), along with update recommendations to grab new drivers (cutting-edge stuff), oh, and ShadowPlay, which, let's face it, was largely written off by gamers.
Over time, GFE changed and required an Nvidia account to login. Why? Good question. I still don't know, and nothing transferred over from machine to machine with that login, plus there was no personal information stored on the app either. So, Nvidia, why did you need me to login? That remains a mystery.
Then came the captcha – good grief, the captcha. Select the squares with the traffic lights in them. Great, thanks. Does the pole count as a traffic light? That square also has the corner of a traffic light in it – does that count? Wrong, try again (argh).
Lastly, came the email notification instead to sign in, and arguably a dramatic improvement as a result. All for a driver update notification. Fantastic.
How bad did it get? I actively recommended against installing GFE on machines to pretty much anyone in the PC gaming space. I treated it in the exact same manner I reserve for third-party antivirus software – just don't, it's not worth it. I never installed GFE on my own rigs, that's for sure. After every build I finished or update I did on my own PCs, I'd go straight to Nvidia's website, download the drivers directly, and install them without installing GeForce Experience, with the occasional glance for a new driver every month or so. Life was good.
Then I got the chance to check out AMD's Adrenalin software, and boy oh boy, was I impressed. From stats to settings to driver updates, the works, it was (and still is) incredible. How could Nvidia be sleeping on a treasure trove of features when the competition (which is notably struggling with GPU market share) did such a swell job with its app?
GeForce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel rolled into one
With the launch of the Nvidia App (what a name, guys – killed it) and the death of GeForce Experience, as mentioned, I was nervous at first but then I quickly became elated. This was everything I wanted in a decent GPU control app. It almost feels weird saying this, but it was great to see Team Green finally catch up with AMD.
Not only did the Nvidia App take the best of GeForce Experience (what little there was), but it also took the ridiculously antiquated Windows XP-looking Nvidia Control Panel, and baked some of its most used features in as well. All put together in a lovely little package that, thankfully, doesn't require a login. Or a captcha! (Although you can login if you want – but I'm not sure why you would).
In almost every scenario, the Nvidia App is a major upgrade. Driver updates and notifications, check. Graphics settings for games (for those who don't like to tinker with settings), check. Monitor control options, check. There's even stuff in here to overclock your GPU and monitor in-game stats. Nice.
There is still a link out to that old-school Control Center for those who require finer details adjusting (if you're a madman who needs to adjust monitor color settings, or the other refined 3D settings, for instance), sadly, but that's not the end of the world.
However, the Nvidia App isn't flawless, and there's still room for improvement. Go on the Home tab, and you'll find links to Nvidia Broadcast, ICAT, FrameView, and GeForce Now. They act as sub-links, kind of, either pushing you to a download page, or opening the program directly from there, but full integration would make the Nvidia App seriously more potent.
Right now, Nvidia has only just caught up with AMD (it still feels very weird to say that), and there's nothing here that really separates this app from the crowd. It's a nice update for the folks that are already with Nvidia, but there's nothing more to it than that. The Nvidia App doesn't push the envelope on what could be done with it. Still, I guess we should all be thankful that those damn traffic lights have disappeared, at least for now.
And that's the worry, really. Perhaps Team Green finally realized that it just wasn't getting as many sign-ins as it used to on GeForce Experience. That us good PC folks were dodging the bullet entirely and opting to download just the bare graphics driver, without the weird green little add-on package in tow. Perhaps this is all just a cunning ploy to get us to download this shiny new thing, with a few added bonuses, and then, six months down the line, wham: Login please, oh, and identify these bicycles while you're at it. Wrong! Try again.
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