Get Ready for "Gamerlicious" Nvidia Control Panel

MaZa said:
There goes my theory as I am also 40. Well, in couple of days will be.
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It's not generational but there were certainly some things I miss, mainly the simplicity. Back with XP I started monitoring (also was related to optimizing) the task manager. The processes were straight forward, there weren't many. FF to win 7 (which I just recently loaded up) and while there's more, it's still pretty simple and manageable. But here on W10 and 11 it's just this insane list of crap. I don't even try to mess with most of it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
One means forces many people to have programs and features on their computer they don't want

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

Spot the difference?

It should not be assumed that everyone who buys a GOU wants streaming. Or even gaming...
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I have to agree here. I wish installation prompts allowing you to select components were more robust than they currently are for a lot of popular programs.
 
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criccio said:
You don't use GFE, you just use this. This replaces GFE and will include features from NVCP.
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And that's the problem. I don't want the GFE crap at all! I don't have GFE on my machine now, I haven't at any time since it launched, and I don't want those features on my machine now. It's just useless bloat. If there is no way to change configuration of my hardware without installing useless bloat I do not want, then that is awful.

I suspect there might be modders that step in though, just like with the tools that modify Nvidias driver packages today, and remove the unwanted junk.
 
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.
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Screen recording, camera and capture card recording, are useful for a ton of non-gaming situations. And using your GPU to do the encoding is the best choice, most of the time.

It's fantastic that AMD has supported it with a pretty rich interface, which supports all of the major features of their hardware, for a few years. And it's nice that Nvidia is finally trying to match it.
 
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.
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My take is the same as it was 30 years ago. If something isn't actively used, it should not be installed. Hardware or software. It just ads more points of failure and potential vulnerabilities, not to mention bloat that increases RAM, CPU and storage use.

If I don't use a program it is not disabled, but completely removed from my drive. I wish I could remove all of the hardware I don't use (on board motherboard crap) but that is often not possible. In some cases with good boards you can at least disable it in BIOS.

The user should control everything. And what the user does not want should not be on their device.

Microsoft is the worst offender here with all of their mandatory, non-removable cloud and ecosystem bullshit that follows the OS when you install it, but it seems like everyone is following suit, and it is completely unacceptable.
 
chameleoneel said:
Screen recording, camera and capture card recording, are useful for a ton of non-gaming situations. And using your GPU to do the encoding is the best choice, most of the time.

It's fantastic that AMD has supported it with a pretty rich interface, which supports all of the major features of their hardware, for a few years. And it's nice that Nvidia is finally trying to match it.
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I'm not disputing that it might be useful for some things. I'm saying that it shouldn't be forced on you if you don't use it. Make it an optional install. WE should control what goes on our machines.
 
I don't hate it. I wonder if they are just trying to get more users to play with video card settings and do more with it. My annoyance was not remembering my login to just have it grab a driver. Id get frustrated and then just go download the driver off the website.

I also dont overly interact with it so while it is changing a bit, it doesnt change my day to day life much so for me, cant really get too much emotional response out of it.

The goal of most of these companies is a swiss army knife. It is easier to maintain one piece of software than several trying to accommodate every little group.

That said, a module based install wouldnt be the worst path for them.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
One means forces many people to have programs and features on their computer they don't want

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

Spot the difference?

It should not be assumed that everyone who buys a GOU wants streaming. Or even gaming...
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Increase the size of these theoretical programs by a factor of 10 and I can spot the difference. The new control panel is 130MB, by the way. That is 1/1,000th the size of a game update these days and 1/10th the size of a program that is just supposed to customize your RGB lighting.
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm not disputing that it might be useful for some things. I'm saying that it shouldn't be forced on you if you don't use it. Make it an optional install. WE should control what goes on our machines.
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NVIDIA wants their customers to be able to access and utilize the full suite of features that comes with using one of their products. Petty people constantly complained about GeForce Experience including how you needed to sign in with an account to use it. NVIDIA addresses all of these concerns and yet people still find a reason to complain about it despite this unified app being faster and less resource intensive than the old control panel.

NVIDIA bad, we get it.
 
MaZa said:
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.
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Could be, now more and more people install application from the command line Linux style, trusting their OS and app maker.

Zarathustra[H] said:
Spot the difference?
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Yes we can see the negative consequence for both the company and the customer in one case and it is hard to spot for the first case. Almost sound like a mental issue at some point.

I can get the I do not want an OS that come with a pre-installed internet browser, I do not get installing an OS meant to be installed by grandparents and non-technical people and being angry at their high convenience in exchange of total control and off by default status, why not install an extreme basic Linux-Unix instead and go from there ? People are not forcing you to install Windows, install that Nvidia APP, etc...

The application I do for work like many install everything and control via licensing what the user can do, the complexity of doing otherwise for what ? Not sure how we would react to someone having giant issue with it, for what saving 100mb of install space on a 2024 computers ? we would just pay for that harddrive space I think.
 
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Armenius said:
NVIDIA wants their customers to be able to access and utilize the full suite of features that comes with using one of their products. Petty people constantly complained about GeForce Experience including how you needed to sign in with an account to use it. NVIDIA addresses all of these concerns and yet people still find a reason to complain about it despite this unified app being faster and less resource intensive than the old control panel.

NVIDIA bad, we get it.
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Its not petty at all. It is foundational. It is counter to the very basics of the PC industry and owning a computer. That we the users and no one else own our machines and decide what goes on them and what doesn't, and no one else, not Microsoft, not Nvidia, no one gets to be a part of that decision.

Exercising absolute personal control over the machine is the whole point of owning a PC.

Otherwise just be this girl. Buy an iPad and be done with it.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE

What's a computer?
 
I must be old but I absolutely loath these new flashy interfaces. The current control panel does what it needs to do, without fluff, stuff is easy to find. Modern UIs always seem like they bury things under an obscene amount of clicks for no reason.Its like trying to use a mobile website. Turn 42 in May

Never used GFE, Never even installed it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Otherwise just buy an iPad
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At least install a very basic Linux and control it has much as you want ? Obviously thousand of other people decision will still impact what goes on, but you would be closer.

Do you think the same about your tv, phone, microwave, the idea MIcrosoft is not involved on what goes on our machine when we install microsoft software, specially an OS, is a bit strange, how could it possibly work ?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Its not petty at all. It is foundational. It is counter to the very basics of the PC industry and owning a computer. That we the users and no one else own our machines and decide what goes on them and what doesn't, and no one else, not Microsoft, not Nvidia, no one gets to be a part of that decision.

Exercising absolute personal control over the machine is the whole point of owning a PC. Otherwise just buy an iPad and be done with it.
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If i should just buy an ipad and be done with it, why not just install linux and control your pc and be done with it?

I feel like the only thing you even use a pc for is to tell people what you dont use a pc for.
 
LukeTbk said:
Do you think the same about your tv, phone, microwave, the idea MIcrosoft is not involved on what goes on our machine when we install microsoft software, specially an OS, is a bit strange, how could it possibly work ?
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That's a bit straw-man:ish.

Of course we expect Microsoft to design the OS.

It's just that they seem to have forgotten what an OS is.

An OS is supposed to be a blank slate. A kernel, a driver system, a desktop manager, some API's to make things work, some settings applications, network stack and a file manager.

On top of that the user is supposed to be able to install what they want/need, and NOT install what they don't want/need.

Microsoft hasn't made anything that one could - with a straight face - call an OS since at least Windows 7, and even that forced too much Microsoft ecosystem on users.

There should seriously be a kind of Volcker rule for computers.

- Hardware
- Operating System
- Programs
- Software store

As a business, pick one, and stay in that lane, and never cross into the others. Too much conflict of interest there.
 
Darunion said:
I feel like the only thing you even use a pc for is to tell people what you dont use a pc for.
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I have repeatedly said that people should have the choice to install whatever they please on their computers, and use it to their hearts content.

Streaming stuff is not for me, but I am not trying to tell others what to do with their software.

I am just trying to tell them that they shouldn't be allowed to force their choices on me.
 
LukeTbk said:
At least install a very basic Linux and control it has much as you want ? Obviously thousand of other people decision will still impact what goes on, but you would be closer.
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And yes, I do daily drive Linux, and try to avoid Microsoft wherever I can, but it just isn't possible everywhere. At least not yet.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have repeatedly said that people should have the choice to install whatever they please on their computers, and use it to their hearts content.

Streaming stuff is not for me, but I am not trying to tell others what to do with their software.

I am just trying to tell them that they shouldn't be allowed to force their choices on me.
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I dunno, a company producing software should be able to do whatever the heck they want with it, its theirs. They're not forcing anyone to use it. If you don't agree with what they've done with it then you are unfortunately forced to find another solution.
 
Another step entirely pushing me over to my Macbook Pro. I'll keep using my gaming PC while I can, but if I have to install this garbage to use an nvidia card coupled with how much I hate Windows - I may just give up building a gaming PC moving forward and stick with mac, even if that means having to use Crossovers, etc to run PC games.
 
I'd actually love to sit down next to a person who's used this new app and is familiar with NVCP and have them explain to me how its "garbage".

It just does all the same things faster.

I get the opinion that there are quite a few people who read a headline and just "hate" on it because they hate on everything that isn't the way they've been doing something for 20 years and can't adjust.
 
The existing Nvidia control panel dates back to Windows 98 pretty sure. So it's not at all surprising they are updating it.

A few times when trying to change a setting or apply a global setting, it seems to lock up, but it just takes 30 seconds to apply the setting. But can be annoying. Luckily those are set and forget type settings.

As far as the new app goes, I will reserve judgement until giving it a try. Maybe being written on newer codebase will speed it up.
 
MavericK said:
Seems fine to me. Seems like a good move toward what AMD has, which is far superior in terms of functionality, currently.

You can still access the old Control Panel, if you go to Settings and then scroll all the way down to the bottom in the app.
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I hope I can find a way to mod the driver package to avoid the Nvidia app all together and just get the old configuration.
 
revenant said:
I guess that's what all those e-cores are for, right?
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Drives me up a wall that they load up our machines with unwanted bloat, and then sell us products to deal with the negative impacts of all the unwanted bloat.

I have a 24C/48T Threadripper and I still shut down and disable everything before launching a game. No unnecessary background tasks allowed.

When I play I want the machine completely dedicated to that game. No fan control software, no mouse software, no RGB software, no chat clients, no open windows, nothing in the taskbar, and a scan through the services to make sure nothing I don't need is running.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Drives me up a wall that they load up our machines with unwanted bloat, and then sell us products to deal with the negative impacts of all the unwanted bloat.

I have a 24C/48T Threadripper and I still shut down and disable everything before launching a game. No unnecessary background tasks allowed.

When I play I want the machine completely dedicated to that game. No fan control software, no mouse software, no RGB software, no chat clients, no open windows, nothing in the taskbar, and a scan through the services to make sure nothing I don't need is running.
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I always used to do that stuff until I started working from home on my gaming machine. Now I'll fire up AAA games while Teams, Chrome, Word, 2-3 Adobe Suite programs, etc. are all running...and it rarely matters at all. Those videos where Linus tests gaming performance while bloatware is running are pretty much true. At least if your rig is relatively current.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Drives me up a wall that they load up our machines with unwanted bloat, and then sell us products to deal with the negative impacts of all the unwanted bloat.

I have a 24C/48T Threadripper and I still shut down and disable everything before launching a game. No unnecessary background tasks allowed.

When I play I want the machine completely dedicated to that game. No fan control software, no mouse software, no RGB software, no chat clients, no open windows, nothing in the taskbar, and a scan through the services to make sure nothing I don't need is running.
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Sounds more like a "because it makes me feel better" kind of thing (which I totally understand) rather than something you have to do today. If all that was required of a modern high end desktop system, we'd have a real problem.
 
Domingo said:
I always used to do that stuff until I started working from home on my gaming machine. Now I'll fire up AAA games while Teams, Chrome, Word, 2-3 Adobe Suite programs, etc. are all running...and it rarely matters at all. Those videos where Linus tests gaming performance while bloatware is running are pretty much true. At least if your rig is relatively current.
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Yep. Just a waste of time to go through all of that. Systems are so powerful nowadays. Double click that exe with 20 tabs open in the background, it don't care.
 
NightReaver said:
Yep. Just a waste of time to go through all of that. Systems are so powerful nowadays. Double click that exe with 20 tabs open in the background, it don't care.
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I remember when not running a game full-screen caused a huge performance hit. Doesn't really matter much anymore, most games default to borderless window these days.
 
Right now the only program I occasionally need to close is Teams. It causes some games to go absolutely berserk when you get a Teams pop-up message mid-game. Usually games that use exclusive fullscreen, but not all of 'em...and occasionally on borderless, too. With those, I just set a timer on my phone to stop playing after 10-15 minutes and log back in. Otherwise, I just let all my background processes ride. Per the performance monitor within gamebar, running a full suite of my business apps only has a 1-2% impact. At least as long as I'm not trying to export video or shrink a 200-page PDF or something.
 
It's about time they updated their control panel, the old one was a logical layout when it was more simple but it never designed for the many features that drivers include these days and it showed in how it ran and how hard it was to find related features at times. Having a modern interface designed for larger higher res monitors allows for more settings on a page as well as the ability to organize them better. I dislike when interfaces are changed for aesthetic reasons that end up making them harder to use but this appears to make it easier to use.

I'm also glad that they moved the GFE stuff over and dropped the login requirement because I always hated that. It sounds like it's faster and more responsive which is also good. I can't imagine many people here are running short of drive space or memory and I assume it lets you turn off things like recording and overlay if you really don't want them running so bloat seems to be a nitpicky complaint.
 
I too hate designs that require more clicks and hide settings. But I don't think that applies here. The general layout is similar and most of the settings seem to be there with the same amount of clicks. The biggest problem with the current NV control panel is you cannot resize the 3D settings page, so you have to do a lot of scrolling.

The new overlay generally looks improved as well. I use it for screen shots and videos. It is the best video recording program I used, and the only one that ever game me no issues when recording with games.
 
Domingo said:
I always used to do that stuff until I started working from home on my gaming machine. Now I'll fire up AAA games while Teams, Chrome, Word, 2-3 Adobe Suite programs, etc. are all running...and it rarely matters at all. Those videos where Linus tests gaming performance while bloatware is running are pretty much true. At least if your rig is relatively current.
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That cruft running in the background is, guaranteed, going to be doing something more than sitting quietly at an inopportune moment. Worse offenders are windows update, adobe creative cloud, and any video conferencing/calling software. Seems to be a law of nature that the timing is such that inconvenience will be maximized.

I.e.: why settle for "rarely" when it should be "never"?
 
Does this app have a normal mode? I.e. not dark mode? I hate the whole dark mode mania.

Edit: I checked it doesn't have non-dungeon mode. But that's not the only thing that it lacks. How is this supposed to replace the control panel when it is missing about 75% of the graphics settings? G-SYNC settings, monitor settings, video playback settings, color settings it barely has any functions. nvidia is delusional if they think this is a suitable replacement.
 
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emphy said:
That cruft running in the background is, guaranteed, going to be doing something more than sitting quietly at an inopportune moment. Worse offenders are windows update, adobe creative cloud, and any video conferencing/calling software. Seems to be a law of nature that the timing is such that inconvenience will be maximized.

I.e.: why settle for "rarely" when it should be "never"?
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Well, I could go through all the trouble to close all that stuff, re-open it all later and and reboot constantly...or just fire up a game and not notice or care 99% of the time. Teams is the only program I've ever had any issues with while gaming, and sometimes I do close it. With the other stuff, it's predictable. Windows Update only downloads anything of significance on the first Tuesday afternoon of the month, so that's pretty easy to deal with. At least minus "urgent" updates which roll out 1-2 times per year. Creative Cloud won't download or update unless you allow it to.
 
Domingo said:
Right now the only program I occasionally need to close is Teams. It causes some games to go absolutely berserk when you get a Teams pop-up message mid-game. Usually games that use exclusive fullscreen, but not all of 'em...and occasionally on borderless, too. With those, I just set a timer on my phone to stop playing after 10-15 minutes and log back in. Otherwise, I just let all my background processes ride. Per the performance monitor within gamebar, running a full suite of my business apps only has a 1-2% impact. At least as long as I'm not trying to export video or shrink a 200-page PDF or something.
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I mean Teams is just janky anyway. The New Teams will just close without error for me constantly on my work laptop.
 
chameleoneel said:
Screen recording, camera and capture card recording, are useful for a ton of non-gaming situations.
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yeah, that's what the FBI told them

i don't have much to add that wasn't already said by OP. imo, they should've just kept it the way it was and added a dark mode or continue to give people an option to use it or not. prob got built in spying and won't be too long before there's built in advertising.
 
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d3athf1sh said:
yeah, that's what the FBI told them

i don't have much to add that wasn't already said by OP. imo, they should've just kept it the way it was and added a dark mode or continue to give people an option to use it or not. prob got built in spying and won't be too long before there's built in advertising.
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You are incredibly naive if you think they couldn't already do that level of data collection without consumer-facing features. Also, you're already on the internet mate. Might as well just assume every single thing you're doing on your computer is already being track every second you have an active internet connection.
 
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