Nvidia investigating reports of Game Filters hampering GPU performance

Nvidia's new App, designed to replace GeForce Experience, has hit a snag. Gamers are reporting performance drops in certain games when the App is running in the background, prompting investigations and a temporary workaround from Nvidia itself.

The issue, first brought to light by X user Sebastian Castellanos and subsequently investigated by various media outlets (including Tom's Hardware and Hardware Unboxed), can cause frame rate drops of up to 15% in some games. This comes as a surprise, as the Nvidia App had been in beta for months without any major issues.

The performance hit appears to be linked to the App's “Game Filters and Photo mode,” which allows users to apply various visual effects and filters to their games. Multiple individuals and Nvidia have already confirmed that disabling this feature fixes the performance issues. As explained by Nvidia, if you want to disable the feature that's causing problems, go to Nvidia App Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode.

While the performance impact varies depending on the game and hardware configuration, an up to 15% hit in performance in games is quite significant. The issue's inconsistency, with some titles running pretty much the same with the feature enabled while others have substantial drops in framerates, likely contributed to it going unnoticed during the beta phase. Fortunately, the fix seems relatively straightforward, and Nvidia is likely working on a hotfix driver to address the issue. This could involve turning off the Game Filters feature by default or optimising it to minimize its performance impact.

KitGuru says: For those who typically turn off overlays on games, this issue might not have been noticeable. However, for gamers using Nvidia's Game Filters and Photo mode, temporarily deactivating it is recommended until Nvidia releases a proper fix.

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