The Nvidia app is living proof that competition is good for us all

I love the new Nvidia app. I’m no stranger to criticizing Nvidia, especially when it comes to disappointing GPUs like the RTX 5070, but I have to hand Team Green its flowers when they’re deserved. And the Nvidia app, along with its many changes, deserves some flowers.

I’m not blind to the fact that the Nvidia app may have never existed, though. Were it not for stiff competition from AMD on the software front, Nvidia users might still be dealing with endlessly logging into GeForce Experience and scrolling through the Nvidia Control Panel to find some random setting. Although it’s possible that Nvidia would’ve made the Nvidia app regardless of the competition, I have a hard time believing that. And I have an even more difficult time believing it would be as good as it is if it weren’t for AMD.

The Nvidia app was the logical conclusion to a big problem

One app to rule them all

Although we’re used to having a unified piece of software for GPU management today, be it from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, things weren’t that way before. Nvidia and AMD (or ATI, depending on the exact timeframe you look at) released a software package with each new driver. There was the driver itself along with some sort of control panel. The control panel wasn’t a fancy suite of extra features and overclocking capabilities. It was just an interface to manage the settings of your GPU that otherwise wouldn’t be available through the standard Windows Control Panel.

Toward the end of 2015, however, AMD said it would retire the Catalyst Control Center that it previously used in favor of Radeon Software. Instead of a basic control panel, AMD integrated drivers, per-game settings, overclocking, and the settings of Catalyst Control Center into one, easy-to-use interface. It was ultimately a response to Nvidia, who two years earlier released GeForce Experience to live alongside the Nvidia Control Panel.

Radeon Software wasn’t perfect, but it ripped the band-aid off of an archaic system of GPU control panels. Nvidia didn’t get the memo. It continued to use GeForce Experience alongside the Nvidia Control Panel for nearly a decade after Radeon Software was introduced. It wasn’t a problem at first. GeForce Experience was largely a way to get drivers easily and quickly optimize your games initially. But as time went on and more settings worked their way into GeForce Experience, the disparity between it and the Nvidia Control Panel became all too obvious.

That’s largely because of Radeon Software. AMD didn’t nail the software out of the gate, but it proved that you could have an all-in-one suite for managing your GPU rather than spreading settings across two separate apps. Although anyone who lived through that time could tell you that your G-Sync settings were in the Control Panel, while the per-game anti-aliasing settings were available in both, it was very difficult for new PC gamers to get on board. I wouldn’t be surprised if most Nvidia users never even opened the Nvidia Control Panel, considering it silently installs alongside the driver.

The sign-in requirement is a big deal

Making up for the sins of GeForce Experience

AMD was the first to act by unifying its software suite, but that’s not the only way Radeon Software put pressure on Nvidia. When GeForce Experience was first released, it didn’t require anything from you. Download the software, automatically optimize the settings in your games, and get notifications when new drivers were rolled out. Very quickly after introducing GeForce Experience, however, Nvidia started requiring a login for the app. You’d need an Nvidia account to use the app, which meant you’d have to stay logged in if you wanted to be notified of new drivers — or access the growing list of features in the application.

AMD never required an account to access Radeon Software, even after years of GeForce Experience requiring a login. Logging into GeForce Experience or creating an Nvidia account in the first place isn’t a big problem, at least if you aren’t super concerned with your online privacy. The more frustrating issue was that Nvidia locked easy access to drivers behind a login, and the app would consistently log you out while it was running in the background, usually leading to missed driver releases.

With the Nvidia app, you no longer need to sign in. You can, and you’ll be able to redeem codes and earn rewards if you do. But the core functions of the Nvidia app aren’t locked behind a sign-in screen. Although it’s more likely that Nvidia responded to user backlash over the login requirement more than AMD’s approach, it’s hard to imagine that backlash would exist if AMD hadn’t maintained a hand-off approach to GPU settings. After all, if both AMD and Nvidia required a login for their apps, Nvidia’s requirement in GeForce Experience wouldn’t seem so arbitrary.

Related

Nvidia kills GeForce Experience, releases a far superior Nvidia App out of beta

Say hello to Nvidia’s new GeForce GPU app

The proof is in the features

Feeling the pressure from Team Red

I’m happy that Nvidia finally capitulated to its users and AMD by integrating the Nvidia Control Panel into the Nvidia app and doing away with the login requirement. But that’s not where the heat of battle really is. The next frontier of competition comes from driver-level features, which is an area where AMD has already covered a lot of ground. We’ve had AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) for years, which is basically FSR 1 that you can inject into any game, and more recently, we got AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), which adds frame generation to nearly any game.

Nvidia has been trying to catch up, and that’s made the Nvidia app significantly better. Nvidia introduced Nvidia Image Scaling (NIS) shortly after RSR came out, which is basically the same thing as RSR. But it was locked to the Nvidia Control Panel, and it was never clear if the setting was actually working or not. Now, it’s part of the Nvidia app, and you can turn it on easily either globally or on a per-game basis.

More important is Nvidia’s new Smooth Motion feature. It’s only supported by RTX 50-series GPUs right now, but it’s basically Nvidia’s take on AFMF, giving you frame generation in nearly any game either globally or on a per-game basis. Although it’s possible that these features were being worked on in the background, I have a tough time believing Nvidia would have rolled them out had it not been for AMD.

Related

5 ways the Nvidia app falls behind AMD Adrenalin

AMD’s GPU software is full of handy features.

This is what competition should look like

I’m not here to say that AMD Software is better than the Nvidia app or vice versa. They both have some strengths and weaknesses, and I wouldn’t recommend choosing a GPU based on software experience over performance. I’m just glad to see that competition on the software front has made the user experience better across the board, regardless of if you’re using an Nvidia, AMD, or Intel GPU. And the Nvidia app is living proof that competition is alive and well.