Nvidia is finally giving their control panel a much-needed makeover

We've been asking for an upgrade for a while

Jack Goodall

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Currently, the Nvidia Control Panel and GeForce Experience are separate pieces of software, but Nvidia is uniting the two under the new ‘Nvidia App’, which is now available in beta. This soon means the end for the outdated control panel, which we’ve been asking Nvidia to update for some time.

While GeForce Experience looks nice and modern, Nvidia Control Panel has been left to rot. It has certainly been a case of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’, but it is an integral piece of software for your Nvidia GPU that’s designed for adjusting global graphics settings and other display options. Fusing these two together in one modern package makes a lot of sense to us.

Nvidia App beta now available

Nvidia have announced the new Nvidia App, which they label as ‘the essential companion for PC gamers & creators’. It finally brings unity to the Control Panel, GeForce Experience and RTX Experience apps in a single piece of software. This now gives us a place to tinker with global settings, per-game optimization, and video recording for all Nvidia graphics cards in one place without having to download separate pieces of software.

You can now download the beta on the Nvidia website, and we’d suggest doing so if you’re interested in having all your graphics options in one location, per game and globally. Plus, it gives you a place to keep all your drivers up to date (as GeForce Experience does).

Can I still use the Nvidia Control Panel?

For the time being, yes, you can still use the Nvidia Control Panel. Many of us are well accustomed with this piece of software, even if it does look like it hasn’t progressed past a Windows XP-style design.

We don’t know if Nvidia will phase out the older software altogether in future, but we kind of feel like the classic control panel still has its place. Especially if you don’t have a particularly gaming-focused rig fitted with the best graphics card – something simple and lightweight to quickly change a couple of settings is always a nice option to have.