Uniform driver software comes and eliminates one annoying detail

It has been the companion of many owners of a Geforce graphics card from Nvidia for several years now. Some people find it annoying because of the account requirement. We're talking about the Geforce Experience, which represents part of the fragmented driver software. The second component is the Nvidia Control Panel.

The company will soon bury both of them and in their place will be a unified program with the simple name Nvidia app kick (via Nvidia). Perhaps the best thing about it: the annoying registration required for the Geforce Experience is no longer necessary or is then only optional.

Nvidia is finally following suit and fulfilling the hopes of many gamers. Because with AMD and Intel, uniform driver software without registration has long been standard.

The beta is already available

You can also try out the new software. There is a freely accessible beta version that you download here can.

The beta currently only replaces the Geforce Experience, the system control remains for the time being. There is a reason for this: not all of the control panel functions are integrated into the Nvidia app yet. For example, the display and video settings are missing.

This is what the Nvidia app looks like

This is what the Nvidia app interface looks like.

There are five higher-level menu items on the left: Home page, driver, graphic, Redeem and Settings:

• Home page: Shows the game library and links additional software (such as Nvidia Broadcast and Omniverse).
• Driver: Displays the currently installed driver and allows a newer one to be installed. At the same time, all important details about the currently installed driver are clearly displayed.
• Graphic: Here you can have your games optimized automatically. There is a finely graduated controller available for this purpose Performance until Quality suffices. You will also find the global settings there.
• Redeem: Voucher codes can be redeemed here.
• Settings: Here you can see the details of your computer, activate or deactivate the overlay and set whether the graphics driver should be installed automatically as soon as a new version is available.

The overlay has been revised

In the overlay you have access to recording, screenshots, highlights and performance statistics.

As before, the in-game overlay can be used with [Alt] + [Z] to access recording, game filters and highlights. The design is now based on that of the Geforce Experience – it is also being standardized.

With [Alt] + [R] you can activate the performance statistics. This can be freely configured in overlay mode. If the “Custom” preset is selected, you can choose exactly which metric you want to see in a game – and of course where in the image you want the data to appear.

The game filters RTX HDR and RTX Dynamic Color Adjustment are also new. The latter is intended to provide improved visual clarity while gaming.

RTX HDR is intended to enable high dynamic range even for games that do not natively support the standard. This apparently applies to all titles based on DirectX 9, 11 and 12 as well as Vulkan.

The game filters including the two new RTX filters.

Some settings are omitted

Nvidia doesn't just include well-known and new functions in the app. Some features are also being deleted that were not really used well and for which there are better alternatives from third-party providers. This includes:

• Streaming directly to Twitch and YouTube
• Sharing photos on Facebook

In addition to the standardization of the driver software, the most important thing for many users is that the registration requirement, as we know it from Geforce Experience, is no longer required. Login is purely optional. However, there are rewards if you choose to do so. In the case of the beta version of the Nvidia app, this is an XP bundle for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone.

When will the Nvidia app be released as a full version?

Nvidia has not yet commented on this. It may well be that it will take a while before Geforce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel are finally replaced. Since the beta already appears to be quite extensive and mature, we believe that the old software will end sooner.

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What do you think of the new Nvidia app? Are you happy that Team Green has finally managed to combine Geforce Experience and Control Panel in a single tool? And how have you handled it so far? Have you used Geforce Experience at all? Or was the registration requirement too annoying for you? Feel free to write it to us in the comments!