Get Ready for "Gamerlicious" Nvidia Control Panel

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Apparently Nvidia has decided to eschew the excellent tried and true Nvidia Control Panel and integrate it with bloatware and give it a "gaming" make-over.


View: https://youtu.be/aiwuYbURWVI

To say I am not a fan would be the understatement of the year.

Gaming amounts to what? 0.5% of all PC use?

Why have the powers that be decided that absolutely everything needs this childish aesthetic instead of classic conservative functional UI's? And why the incessant addition of bloatware to everything? I still hate that the Xbox overlay installs with every copy of Windows and can't be removed.

As it is I never install the GeForce Experience, and I don't want that experience in any way shape or form.

Good software does one thing and one thing only. If you want to do another thing get different software. Stop bundling all the junk together into a bloated mess!

Quite frankly it is embarrassing.

The "Gamer" kiddies seem to like it though.

I'm seriously hoping there will be a way to opt out, and just have a classic, clean settings window instead.
 
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Bit of a change from the xp-esque one that's been hanging around for the better part of 20 years now. Worth a try at some point i suppose.
 
The consumer drivers are quite literally called "Game Ready" drivers. For the most part, they're geared towards gamers. Gamers are going to be a large portion of the consumer market that bothers regularly updating their drivers and taking advantage of all the consumer tech the cards have to offer. Nvidia offers Studio drivers for people on the professional end of things.

The consumer focused NCP has needed an overhaul for a while now. AMD and even Intel have had better software suites for their GPUs for a few years now.

Edit: After installing and looking around the app, I really have no idea what you're bitching out when it comes to calling it "childish". The UI is very clean and fairly minimalistic. It's a massive improvement from GFE and I hope they fully integrate all the NCP features into it over time so there's no need to have multiple apps in order to access all the driver and software features on offer.
 
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Derangel said:
AMD and even Intel have had better software suites for their GPUs for a few years now.
Click to expand...

Not better. More bloated and adorned with "gamer exciting" gross aesthetics.

The Nvidia Control Panel has for 20 years been one of the big selling points for Nvidia hardware. A rationally structured no-nonsense configuration screen.

I absolutely hated the AMD Adrenaline drivers when I had to use them when I had my 6900xt. So much garbage bloat and "exciting" red color themes. Ugh.

The old AMD Catalyst Control Center was way better.
 
Derangel said:
Edit: After installing and looking around the app, I really have no idea what you're bitching out when it comes to calling it "childish". The UI is very clean and fairly minimalistic. It's a massive improvement from GFE and I hope they fully integrate all the NCP features into it over time so there's no need to have multiple apps in order to access all the driver and software features on offer.
Click to expand...

Neon green on black color scheme is very infantile. As is all the "gaming" related previews and game library. None of that belongs in what amounts to a settings menu.

I am going to rage every single time I see anything even remotely "gaming" related in an application that is not strictly for gaming.

Gaming in Steam? Great. That's why I installed Steam. Gaming in an overclocking app? That's fine I guess. They are sort-of related.

Gaming in my hardware settings? Or non-uninstallable gaming apps that ship with my OS? Absolutely fucking not.

By looking at my PC, unless I am intentionally trying to launch a game or do something with a game, there should be no hint that games even exit.

UI's should always be designed for usability first. Anything that does not support the maximal usability should be removed. Aesthetic considerations are usually counter to usability.

Nvidia Control Center?

1708647853569.png


Good.


Catalyst Control Center?

1708647976257.png


Not bad. Clean, professional looking and usable.


User interfaces should always be as boring, clean cut, professional looking, and usable as possible. Anyhting that looks "skinned" and doesn't line up with the basic OS theme is bad. Dark modes? Those are fine and great, as long as they match the rest of the OS. Custom color schemes, skins or themes should be outright banned.

Every single window I open in any program on my computer should always have the same basic overall OS theme.

AMD Adrenaline series?

1708648029828.png


Yuck. Gross. Unprofessional "tantalizing" design themes and gaming everywhere.

1708648093982.png


More goddamn "tantalizing" design elements. Looks unprofessional, and includes games. Unacceptable.


If I ever see a game mentioned,game artwork / previews or or anything else gaming related without intentionally trying to play or configure a game, then something has failed.

And any software that doesn't follow the exact theme of the OS is a fail of an app. At least unless it grabs the full screen.
 
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Meh, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've gone into Nvidia CP to change a setting in the last year or more. Doesn't make a difference to me if it's the old version or the new GFE/CP combined one. I'll set it and forget it(literally) like always. Ye olde 2070 games the same either way.
 
As long as the gamma doesn't reset on Startup I'm all for this. I have a monitor that has a Dvi port.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Neon green on black color scheme is very infantile. As is all the "gaming" related previews and game library. None of that belongs in what amounts to a settings menu.

I am going to rage every single time I see anything even remotely "gaming" related in an application that is not strictly for gaming.

Gaming in Steam? Great. That's why I installed Steam. Gaming in an overclocking app? That's fine I guess. They are sort-of related.

Gaming in my hardware settings? Or non-uninstallable gaming apps that ship with my OS? Absolutely fucking not.

By looking at my PC, unless I am intentionally trying to launch a game or do something with a game, there should be no hint that games even exit.

UI's should always be designed for usability first. Anything that does not support the maximal usability should be removed. Aesthetic considerations are usually counter to usability.

Nvidia Control Center?

View attachment 637088

Good.


Catalyst Control Center?

View attachment 637092

Not bad. Clean, professional looking and usable.


User interfaces should always be as boring, clean cut, professional looking, and usable as possible. Anyhting that looks "skinned" and doesn't line up with the basic OS theme is bad. Dark modes? Those are fine and great, as long as they match the rest of the OS. Custom color schemes, skins or themes should be outright banned.

Every single window I open in any program on my computer should always have the same basic overall OS theme.

AMD Adrenaline series?

View attachment 637093

Yuck. Gross. Unprofessional "tantalizing" design themes and gaming everywhere.

View attachment 637094

More goddamn "tantalizing" design elements. Looks unprofessional, and includes games. Unacceptable.


If I ever see a game mentioned,game artwork / previews or or anything else gaming related without intentionally trying to play or configure a game, then something has failed.

And any software that doesn't follow the exact theme of the OS is a fail of an app. At least unless it grabs the full screen.
Click to expand...
And don't forget to bash on the ads.

With amd, even the installer has ads in it. Yuck.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
UI's should always be designed for usability first. Anything that does not support the maximal usability should be removed. Aesthetic considerations are usually counter to usability.
Click to expand...
I agree with you... now can I have my Windows/Office pre-Ribbon menus back?
You know, when it was just dropdowns in Office 2003 and 2 to 3-button hotkeys for all the main features? It went from a 2-button click, to 2-3 button clicks on shifting menus to access the same option.
You could even hide the second bar or drag it onto the same row, if you wanted to make it even more compact. You know like every web browser allows you to do? It also took up more room, which was even more irritating on the 1024x768 resolution monitors at the time.
I know it's been 17 years, but I hate the Ribbon that much.

Excel 2003 (pre-Ribbon): ________________________________________________________ Excel 2016 (Ribbon):
1708665278271.png
1708665665621.png


Back to other dumb UI changes...
 
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sleepeeg3 said:
I agree with you... now can I have my Windows/Office pre-Ribbon menus back?
You know, when it was just dropdowns in Office 2003 and 2-button hotkeys for all the main features? It went from a 2-button click, to 2-3 button clicks on shifting menus to access the same option.
You could even hide the second bar or drag it onto the same row, if you wanted to make it even more compact. You know like every web browser allows you to do? It also took up more room, which was even more irritating on the 1024x768 resolution monitors at the time.
I know it's been 17 years, but I hate the Ribbon that much.

Excel 2003 (pre-Ribbon): ____________________________________ Excel 2007 (Ribbon):
View attachment 637131View attachment 637132

Back to other dumb UI changes...
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. I still hate the ribbon.

It went from orderly and rationally sorted lists, your eyes could just scroll down in straight line from top to bottom to find what you were looking for, to a mishmash of unaligned and just messed up little icons which sometimes you have no idea what they even mean.

The Office Ribbon was one of the worst UI fails of our time. It was at its worst in Office 2007, but they did improve it a little bit since then. Still terrible though.

And what's worse is that LibreOffice felt forced to follow to be "modern".

1708665549678.png


At least LibreOffice left the menus in place, so it is optional, unlike Microsoft's usual strong-arm approach of "you'll do it our way, or you'll do it no way at all".
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
As it is I never install the GeForce Experience, and I don't want that experience in any way shape or form.
Click to expand...
I too never ever use GeForce Experience. nVidia can do what it wants, so long as I get to continue using Sedona (aka nVidia Control Panel) without issue. It's bad enough that after nVidia drivers switched to DCH, Sedona became a Windows Store app. But yeah I just hope Sedona continues to exist as-is, and remains available for us to use. Cuz I sure as fuck don't wanna use whatever this new nVidia app is.
 
Derangel said:
Edit: After installing and looking around the app, I really have no idea what you're bitching out when it comes to calling it "childish". The UI is very clean and fairly minimalistic. It's a massive improvement from GFE and I hope they fully integrate all the NCP features into it over time so there's no need to have multiple apps in order to access all the driver and software features on offer.
Click to expand...

I agree, looks like it's off to a good start to me

I mean maybe some things could be tighter since my usual gripe is information density is shit in modern UIs, but it looks good, and is clean and well laid out.

The overlay looks much improved. Although RIP streaming from it.
 
socK said:
The overlay looks much improved. Although RIP streaming from it.
Click to expand...

Why would anyone want any overlay ever?

It's just useless bloat

I hate that they are forcing this shit on us.

The way these things should work is, if you want an overlay, you can install an overlay. Big bloated "all in one" software needs to die.

Good software does one thing well and does only that one thing. If you want anything else, you get other software.

Absolutely nothing should be forced on us as part of the drivers/config screens.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Why would anyone want any overlay ever?

It's just useless bloat

I hate that they are forcing this shit on us.

The way these things should work is, if you want an overlay, you can install an overlay. Big bloated "all in one" software needs to die.

Good software does one thing well and does only that one thing. If you want anything else, you get other software.

Absolutely nothing should be forced on us as part of the drivers/config screens.
Click to expand...

A company releasing several pieces of software to do something that can be done with a single application is both stupid and a massive waste of everyone's time and hard drive space. Even having two applications for essentially the same thing (accessing built in GPU features) is annoying as hell. Give me all of it in one well laid out, easy to use, application. I hate having multiple applications open at the same time, I hate having a bunch of shit launching with Windows. Condense it all into one bloody program. It simplifies the updating process as well. No fucking way do I want to juggle updating 4-5 smaller apps from the same company when it makes more sense to just do it all in one. I want to enjoy using my computer, not deal with pointless roadblocks and annoyances. I don't have time for that nonsense. And I want to deal with it even less when it comes to having to find dozens of small apps from dozens of different companies. I'll take convivence and less-than-perfect solutions over wasting time finding perfect, single-use, options.

And let's be frank here: NCP is a garbage application. Even if you like the UI it offers, it's still a very slow and buggy program that really should have been replaced at least a decade ago.
 
Derangel said:
And let's be frank here: NCP is a garbage application. Even if you like the UI it offers, it's still a very slow and buggy program that really should have been replaced at least a decade ago.
Click to expand...

I would have had absolutely no problem with them re-architeting it under the hood, but leaving the user interface the hell alone.

Or. Heck, update the UI, just don't give it the UI equivalent of RGB lighting. If they focused on usability I would be fine with that.

What pisses me the hell off is that they are forcing a ton of shit on me that I will never use and absolutely DO NOT WANT ever installed on any machine of mine. I don't want yet another another shitty game launcher. I don't want any game overlay ever for any reason, I don't want help with finding "optimal" game settings, I don't ever want to screen record or stream anything, so I shouldn't be forced to have the software for it installed.

This bullshit should never be forced on me just because I need the driver for something.

In fact, neither AMD not Nvidia should be offering these things at all. These should be separate third party tools that can optionally be installed if and only if someone wants them.

Quite frankly, it's my comouter. I should never be forced to have anything on it that I don't want.

That is not acceptable now, has never been acceptable, and never will be acceptable.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Why would anyone want any overlay ever?

It's just useless bloat

I hate that they are forcing this shit on us.

The way these things should work is, if you want an overlay, you can install an overlay. Big bloated "all in one" software needs to die.

Good software does one thing well and does only that one thing. If you want anything else, you get other software.

Absolutely nothing should be forced on us as part of the drivers/config screens.
Click to expand...

Yeah why would I ever want to use Steam chat while playing a Steam game. I downloaded the game though it so that must have been the singular function it's allowed to provide. They should ship the overlay as a completely separate binary just in case I don't want the bloat.

And really why would they have the gall to go so far as to even inject their overlay for me? I want to download multiple dlls for the various graphics APIs and want to manually inject them with a tool of my choice.

And thinking about it, why would I want change a recording setting without alt tabbing? It's just supposed to record so obviously it's overstepping its bounds by letting me configure outside of the desktop.

Imagine how terrible it would be if the same tool could also report my frame rate...

I know exactly what doctrine you're quoting except you've taken it to the illogical extreme
 
socK said:
Yeah why would I ever want to use Steam chat while playing a Steam game. I downloaded the game though it so that must have been the singular function it's allowed to provide. They should ship the overlay as a completely separate binary just in case I don't want the bloat.

And really why would they have the gall to go so far as to even inject their overlay for me? I want to download multiple dlls for the various graphics APIs and want to manually inject them with a tool of my choice.

And thinking about it, why would I want change a recording setting without alt tabbing? It's just supposed to record so obviously it's overstepping its bounds by letting me configure outside of the desktop.

Imagine how terrible it would be if the same tool could also report my frame rate...

I know exactly what doctrine you're quoting except you've taken it to the illogical extreme
Click to expand...

That's a little bit of a straw man there.

Things that are directly related to the same task are obviously not a problem. It should just never be completely different things.

Yeah, I WOULD prefer a Steam with no social component. If I want to be social I can install Ventrilo, Teamspeak or use that cloud nonsense I'm forgetting the name of right now.... Uh. Right. Discord. (I don't now, nor will I ever have a discord account). But you know what? I quit playing multiplayer games almost a decade ago at this point, so why would I need or want that crap?

Obviously related tasks such as purchasing a game, downloading that game, managing a game library, seeking customer support, reviewing purchases, etc. are all reasonably related though, and I have no problem with them being bundled. Social would have been best left out. That's bloat for those of us who don't want it.

And yeah,I have been playing games on the PC for over 30 years. I play less now than I used to, but still usually weekly. Never even once have I had the desire to stream or otherwise record my screen. I have never once streamed, I never will stream, heck I have never even watched a stream, and I probably never will. I should not be forced to have streaming software on my machine against my will!

This is something that is completely separate from owning a video card or buying a game, and should quite frankly never be combined.

No one is going to complain about the ability to optionally turn on something trivial and small like a framerate counter, but having an entire streaming subsystem forced on you against your will is just a massive amount of unwanted bloat, and quite frankly unacceptable.

The question that should be asked it, could a reasonable person want one, but not the other. And if the answer is yes, then they shouldn't be bundled.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Yeah, I WOULD prefer a Steam with no social component.
Click to expand...
I'd go even further: I would prefer steam without the obligatory application entirely. Barring that, a version of the application which runs invisibly in the background or, if it must absolutely intrude, with only the minimal mode. No shop, no social, no shit.
 
I'll be curious if they've implemented fingerprinted user tracking, seeing as they've conspicuously done away with logins. I don't mind about the design aspect, in comparison tbh.
 
As far as as looks go, I am with Zarathustra on this one. I already have enough problems with visual noise, trouble finding stuff I need from the graphical mess that most UI are these days. NVCP was clean and efficient, you had everything you needed available neatly organised. Yes it was old and slooooow because the code behind it hadn't been updated for decades but if you ask me it just needed an overhaul, not an axe.

That said, now that Nvidia finally grew a brain and stopped requiring a log-in I will give the new control panel a fair try. Despite the bloat it should be apparently very fast and lightweight.
 
Chris_B said:
Bit of a change from the xp-esque one that's been hanging around for the better part of 20 years now. Worth a try at some point i suppose.
Click to expand...
The current control panel is Vista, not XP.
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's a little bit of a straw man there.

Things that are directly related to the same task are obviously not a problem. It should just never be completely different things.

Yeah, I WOULD prefer a Steam with no social component. If I want to be social I can install Ventrilo, Teamspeak or use that cloud nonsense I'm forgetting the name of right now.... Uh. Right. Discord. (I don't now, nor will I ever have a discord account). But you know what? I quit playing multiplayer games almost a decade ago at this point, so why would I need or want that crap?

Obviously related tasks such as purchasing a game, downloading that game, managing a game library, seeking customer support, reviewing purchases, etc. are all reasonably related though, and I have no problem with them being bundled. Social would have been best left out. That's bloat for those of us who don't want it.

And yeah,I have been playing games on the PC for over 30 years. I play less now than I used to, but still usually weekly. Never even once have I had the desire to stream or otherwise record my screen. I have never once streamed, I never will stream, heck I have never even watched a stream, and I probably never will. I should not be forced to have streaming software on my machine against my will!

This is something that is completely separate from owning a video card or buying a game, and should quite frankly never be combined.

No one is going to complain about the ability to optionally turn on something trivial and small like a framerate counter, but having an entire streaming subsystem forced on you against your will is just a massive amount of unwanted bloat, and quite frankly unacceptable.

The question that should be asked it, could a reasonable person want one, but not the other. And if the answer is yes, then they shouldn't be bundled.
Click to expand...
No, thanks. I don't want to go back to the days of needing to install a dozen different applications to do everything I might need when I can have it all in one place. You call it bloat: I call it streamlining.
 
I wonder if they kept the old UI for backwards compatibility for older systems like Windows 7 or earlier? I actually was jealous of the UI for AMD cards for the past few years.
Here I was hoping for a cosmetic upgrade for Nvidia control panel it looks just the same except for what is under the hood the like the plug in location on your GPU IO ports.
 
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Comixbooks said:
Here I was hoping for a cosmetic upgrade for Nvidia control panel
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Which is what we're eventually getting once its fully feature complete and everything has been moved over. This early beta is not the finished product.

I'm happy has hell, that ancient NCVP was awful to use.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's a little bit of a straw man there.

Things that are directly related to the same task are obviously not a problem. It should just never be completely different things.

Yeah, I WOULD prefer a Steam with no social component. If I want to be social I can install Ventrilo, Teamspeak or use that cloud nonsense I'm forgetting the name of right now.... Uh. Right. Discord. (I don't now, nor will I ever have a discord account). But you know what? I quit playing multiplayer games almost a decade ago at this point, so why would I need or want that crap?

Obviously related tasks such as purchasing a game, downloading that game, managing a game library, seeking customer support, reviewing purchases, etc. are all reasonably related though, and I have no problem with them being bundled. Social would have been best left out. That's bloat for those of us who don't want it.

And yeah,I have been playing games on the PC for over 30 years. I play less now than I used to, but still usually weekly. Never even once have I had the desire to stream or otherwise record my screen.
Click to expand...

Ventrilo and Teamspeak don't solve the chat issue. Discord at least does. Chat is an intrinsically asynchronous thing unlike physically speaking to someone.

What does multiplayer have to do with it? You've never interacted with another human while you were playing a SP game... or not playing a game?

And recording is literally tied to a physical hardware feature on the GPU. Why would it be weird that software for your GPU exposes a way to use it?
 
Personally, I just want all the typical functions I use in one place. The NV Control Panel kinda/sorta does that, although it spreads everything across a pile of different tabs. It's missing the overlay stuff (and the ability to tweak HDR settings), but it's fine. It's just slow, old, and with a dated UI. Luckily, most of that stuff I only need to setup once and then never again...at least unless I use DDU to clean out everything on occasion. The new beta app has most of what I want within it, although it's missing the ability to change my resolution, refresh, color space, etc. Ditto with Gsync. Audio is still housed elsewhere, too. Hopefully that stuff comes over sooner than later. I'd love a way to export my whole laundry list of settings and re-load them quickly, too.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The Nvidia Control Panel has for 20 years been one of the big selling points for Nvidia hardware. A rationally structured no-nonsense configuration screen.
Click to expand...

No it hasn't. I guarantee you, in the last 20 years, exactly zero people were at a PC hardware store, holding up an AMD and Nvidia card side by side and saying to themselves "awww man, I really want this Radeon card, but Nvidia has that super slick minimalist control panel that I just can't get enough of, as opposed to AMD Adrenalin's gamer loser aesthetic".
 
As long as I dont have to use GFE for video recording, driver updates, custom settings etc. then it is an upgrade.
 
Armenius said:
The current control panel is Vista, not XP.

No, thanks. I don't want to go back to the days of needing to install a dozen different applications to do everything I might need when I can have it all in one place. You call it bloat: I call it streamlining.
Click to expand...

You call it streamlining, I call it dumbing down... 😝 I kid I kid. Anyway this may be a generational thing. When it comes to my PC I am a terrible control freak. I want to have 100% control (although that is quite impossible nowadays) on what goes into my system and what goes out of it, low tolerance for features that I deem unnecessary for my needs if I feel like they are in my way or get shoved down on my throat.
 
MaZa said:
You call it streamlining, I call it dumbing down... 😝 I kid I kid. Anyway this may be a generational thing. When it comes to my PC I am a terrible control freak. I want to have 100% control (although that is quite impossible nowadays) on what goes into my system and what goes out of it, low tolerance for features that I deem unnecessary for my needs if I feel like they are in my way or get shoved down on my throat.
Click to expand...
I'm a young whippersnapper of 40 years. Been gaming on PC since the early '90s.
 
Ranulfo said:
As long as I dont have to use GFE for video recording, driver updates, custom settings etc. then it is an upgrade.
Click to expand...
You don't use GFE, you just use this. This replaces GFE and will include features from NVCP.
 
Armenius said:
No, thanks. I don't want to go back to the days of needing to install a dozen different applications to do everything I might need when I can have it all in one place. You call it bloat: I call it streamlining.
Click to expand...

One means forces many people to have programs and features on their computer they don't want

The other makes you have two programs totaling ~400MB instead of one 400MB program.

Spot the difference?

It should not be assumed that everyone who buys a GPU wants streaming. Or even gaming...
 
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Downloading Nvidia Canvas not sure what to expect. I've been doing pencil drawing on late and color with traditional media like watercolors.
Picked up a set of watercolor from Walmart they are pretty bad unless I use Gesso with them so they don't soak in.
 
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