Thursday, February 22nd 2024
NVIDIA App Doesn't Need a Login, Unlike GeForce Experience
We found out that the new NVIDIA App doesn't need an NVIDIA Account login, and yet gives you nearly all of its functionality. NVIDIA today rolled out the GeForce 551.61 WHQL drivers, and with it, the new NVIDIA App, as we detailed in the driver's news report. NVIDIA App is the company's latest take on a Control Panel application that combines the functionality of the over 20-year-old NVIDIA Control Panel Win32 application, and the modern GeForce Experience app (GFE). The former focuses on settings related to the display head, with one or more settings for the GPU, but has no hardware monitoring or performance overlay features. GFE is more of a concentric outer layer focused on the games installed in your PC, to which you can figure out and apply optimal settings. The new NVIDIA App essentially combines the functionalities of the two, but it has an ace up its sleeve—you don't need an NVIDIA Account to use it.
One of the biggest drawbacks of GeForce Experience is that it mandates you to create an NVIDIA Account, and keeps you logged into this account to use its functionality. Not everyone wants an app that does this; and so some gamers would want to skip installation of GFE altogether during the GeForce driver installation. NVIDIA App takes a refreshingly different approach. It is currently a public beta, isn't part of the driver package, isn't found on Microsoft Store, but is being distributed as a standalone app with its own installer.
Upon installation and the first run, the app greets you with a selection between the two main driver trunks—GeForce Game Ready and GeForce Studio. Gamers should stick to the first option. The second screen asks whether you want NVIDIA App to automatically apply optimized settings for all the games installed in your system that it can detect. By default, this option is selected, but if you feel NVIDIA's optimal settings are a bit too conservative, you can simply uncheck this toggle and click on "next." The next screen asks you whether you want NVIDIA Performance Overlay enabled. This is an important step, as you get to enable the most important feature of the NVIDIA App—Performance Overlay. When enabled, the key combo "Alt+Z" is bound. At any time, including in the middle of a game, you press these to bring up a Sidebar overlay that gives you access to the most relevant NVIDIA features for capturing, screengrabbing, or streaming your gameplay; as well as a shortcut to NVIDIA's all important Statistics service.
The last screen is what won our confidence, and convinced us that NVIDIA App isn't GeForce Experience with a different name and a slightly different UI. This screen presents you with an incentive to log into your NVIDIA Account, but doesn't impose the login upon you. You have the ability to skip this, and go straight to the home screen of the NVIDIA App. We've been exploring this thing for the past half an hour, and we find that nearly all functionality of the NVIDIA App is available to us without the login. If you do want to log in, NVIDIA rewards you with a promotion under the GeForce Rewards tab—a double XP event for Call of Duty MW3. It's not much, but it's quite welcome, and it's not in-your-face. We plan to do a slightly longer article for the weekend, so stay tuned!
You can download the NVIDIA App from here.
One of the biggest drawbacks of GeForce Experience is that it mandates you to create an NVIDIA Account, and keeps you logged into this account to use its functionality. Not everyone wants an app that does this; and so some gamers would want to skip installation of GFE altogether during the GeForce driver installation. NVIDIA App takes a refreshingly different approach. It is currently a public beta, isn't part of the driver package, isn't found on Microsoft Store, but is being distributed as a standalone app with its own installer.
You can download the NVIDIA App from here.
74 Comments on NVIDIA App Doesn't Need a Login, Unlike GeForce Experience
Nothing tough about using OBS studio been using it for a while hotkeys work as any decent recording app/ pause.....
Gameplay is not something I'm interested in.
If it does not have the granular features that NVCP had for each program, I wont be interested either.
Just slows frame rates down.
you know you can fetch nvcp from windows store?
Tried AMD Radeon 4 years ago, never thought once to come back to NVidia for this reason.
AMD Adrenalin has everything embedded into 1 software (games settings, recording, drivers update, streaming, OC tuning and overlay..)
+ no login
+ smooth and consistent UI
AMD's driver control was amazing back when it (re)launched back in the GCN days. Clean, simple, fast, well laid out, and integrated a bunch of 3rd party stuff (most importantly overclocking) into the driver app. Loved using it with my HD7950. Loved the built in OC tools so I didn't have to launch some bloated 3rd party "gamerz" app to OC my card (925 to 1150 core on that 7950, what a beast).
Went back to NVCP with my 980Ti and it felt like a regression with the lack of OC tools and stone age interface, but really I only had to use it a handful of times to make sure some 3D settings were sorted and then never look at it again, so no big deal.
Now I have a 6800XT and yeezus AMD has turned their once svelte control panel into a bloated hog. All sorts of streaming and app launching garbage on the landing page which I couldn't care less about. Takes a bunch of clicking and looking around to find the Adaptive Vsync/framerate limiter/OC tools. Since I don't use it often I have to sort of relearn it every time I go in.
If NV could just learn to use the screen real-estate and put all the screen/performance options on one tab, then all the streamer/Gen-Z gamer bullshit on another page it would already be a huge step up from what AMD's control panel has become.
But benchmarking software is not an actual game, so… I mean, I guess theoretically GSync being on would matter if you have a modern system and try pushing frames as high as you can uncapped in something like OG Quake 3 or UT. But then the question would be whether or not you care about 1000 vs 1200 FPS.
No thanks. Plus god knows how many background processes and bloat to power it.
Thank you for reading my entire response which I also mentioned benchmarking lol
It's not like UI designers are dumb monkeys, when the content is predictable, and not that dense, you can make it bigger, add more air for readability. Microsoft didn't use the same padding in visual code and the setting panel because they know that the density of information can become heavy. The same can be said for the services list of the new task manager. High density = small padding.
I feel like there's a big difference in thinking between a designer and an engineer :D. Lurking on tech website seems to indicate that engineers are more aligned with the east asian way of thinking about data organization... (just check the Japanese version of the Square-Enix store) when It's being taught (Miller's Law) that the average westerner can feel overwhelmed by data overload: they will deal with it if they must, but will avoid interacting with it otherwise. Meanwhile, most writing systems in East Asia are already so dense in information that they just got used to deal with a lot of data at once. Japanese companies don't dare to apply their local design principle to the world because of that.
Yeah my amd laptop has that type of stuff but a 4060
At least i can turn off the browser bit which feeds the adds.
It's the MS store apps way right hehe