nvidia - make modern and good GeForce Settings?

[ARF]

Maybe 25 years have passed since nvidia created the control panel with which the users can adjust different 2D/3D settings for their GeForce graphics cards.
What is the reasoning for not updating the control panel and why they keep the Windows 98 / Windows XP style today in 2023 and beyond ?

 

[DR4G00N]

I hope they never change it. It's simple and does what it needs to.

AMD's equivalent is absolutely horrid in comparison.

 

[ARF]

I hope they never change it. It's simple and does what it needs to.

AMD's equivalent is absolutely horrid in comparison.

I find it difficult for use and can't understand its philosophy - it lacks settings, own user settings / preferences, freedom to choose, innovation. It's like stuck in time while the products which it needs to control are state-of-the-art and most complicated devices created by man.
Graphics is opposite to simplicity - you need creativity, design, thought... neither of which is present here - it's like a simple wordpad document with no soul in it.

 

[N/A]

I guess their main focus is Geforce experience, but at least could apply the same theme

 

[Argyr]

if it ain't broke, don't fix it

 

[Gmr_Chick]

I'm not saying it has to be bleeding-edge and overly complex, but yes, I really do think the Nvidia control panel needs a modern refresh. You can make it more modern but still retain the simple functionality.

 

[qubit]

My issue with the NVIDIA control panel is that it's extremely slow to start and to save settings. Otherwise, it's well designed and shouldn't have any major changes made to it.

 

[P4-630]

It works fine as is.

And AMD should bring back ATi Catalyst Control Center....

 

[tabascosauz]

I find it difficult for use and can't understand its philosophy - it lacks settings, own user settings / preferences, freedom to choose, innovation. It's like stuck in time while the products which it needs to control are state-of-the-art and most complicated devices created by man.
Graphics is opposite to simplicity - you need creativity, design, thought... neither of which is present here - it's like a simple wordpad document with no soul in it.

If you want a bloated one-stop shop, Geforce Experience also has the overclocking tools/overlay stuff that Radeon Software has, it's not missing much.

NVCP should never change. It's simple, no performance penalty, and contains all the relevant per-game performance tweaks you ever need. I've never had NVCP crash on me in 9 years. Radeon Software alone (forget Catalyst) has crashed on me 4 times since Monday, and can be easily and consistently made to hard crash the system just by toggling Freesync on/off at the monitor level while in game.

With Radeon AMD gives you a choice of options that never fit. What if I just want access to features without all the other gaming/streaming garbage? Nope, you can only have:

• No software at all
• Same buggy Radeon Software just without the important tweaks
• Buggy Radeon Software

 

[ARF]

NVCP should never change. It's simple, no performance penalty, and contains all the relevant per-game performance tweaks you ever need.

Are you telling me what I need?

 

[GerKNG]

100% absolutely fucking not.
do not touch software that works perfectly fine to make it an awful stupid UI like the current radeon software... which is also extremely buggy.

 

[droopyRO]

I voted no. I don't see a reason to, it's more of a advanced user thing. People that are less of a "power user" can use GeForce Experience for most things and it works better than AMD's software suite in my experience. Only thing nice of Nvidia would be to give us the options to undervolt and set profiles from GFE.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

Nvidia's looks like it's from the windows XP's days, so dang old looking.
AMD's looks modren, but I where the hell is the apply button for chaning settings ? It's the most basic button to have why is it now were it's suppose to be? Is it in wattman or just on the overclock settings ??? ( I'm using it a 5600G)

 

[caroline!]

You don't want that.

Doing something like AMD's complete NONSENSE panel will drive anyone insane, nvidia's panel is good as it is, all settings are clearly explained, in a compact menu that's easy to navigate instead of having a bunch of "tabs" with complete arbitrary settings in a random order.

You'd think "Home" would be an easy place to find most common settings, right? NO!
Look, it says I've been playing Photoshop...... wow, and for a random amount of time.

Then you have "Preferences" and a setting called "Animation and effects", you'd think, well maybe I can disable all this obnoxious transparency effects that make the program hoard 1GB of memory for nothing, but nope, you know what that does? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It makes no difference at all if it's enabled or disabled, because it doesn't works.

Oh, there's a star icon too, well that must be favourites, so I can save all the settings I like and have them at a glance, but you know what that really does? open up your browser and pull a 404 website on you, LOL.

You get choices during install too, two actually, you can install the drivers alone and no way to change ANY setting afterwards, OR, you can install the drivers but also a ton of useless bloatware "features" that are nothing but spaghetti code. And everything is aimed to gAmERs even if you don't play any games, because... apparently only gamers buy AMD graphics cards.

It's infuriating I swear, and on top of all that there's the constant random crashes, every time I have to deal with a setting it's a mini-nightmare because you never know when everything will crash, hang your PC or worse, sometimes the drivers literally refuse to work because "there are no compatible graphics cards installed" even though there are, it's just a random quirk that's only solved after an hour of uninstalling everything and then reinstalling.

One of the good things about nvidia is that the drivers are rock solid, and no matter which graphics card are you using from a MX series from the 90s to a 4090 the same basic settings will still be there, in the same order and place, instead of this... shit panel that's constantly changing for the worse every time they touch it, Catalyst was FINE but they had to ruin it when they released the first RX cards I believe.

 

[tabascosauz]

Nvidia's looks like it's from the windows XP's days, so dang old looking.
AMD's looks modren, but I where the hell is the apply button for chaning settings ? It's the most basic button to have why is it now were it's suppose to be? Is it in wattman or just on the overclock settings ??? ( I'm using it a 5600G)

No apply button for features, only wattman section. Top right where the load/save button usually is, only appears if you changed something that doesn't automatically apply

@caroline! I was just thinking that these past few days, recognizing PS CC as a "game" on my comp is rather illustrative of Radeon Software's nature lmao. Radeon Software crashing is really frustrating because the app literally just exits whenever it decides to, no message, no error, no event viewer log no nothing.

 

[AusWolf]

I hope they never change it. It's simple and does what it needs to.

AMD's equivalent is absolutely horrid in comparison.

I disagree.

Design aside, Nvidia's settings are basically all crammed in one menu (3D Settings), with the rest of the menu options nearly empty or redundant. It's a relic from the past, Nvidia is 20 years behind on this. Also, no overclocking/tweaking, wtf?

 

[tabascosauz]

I disagree.

Design aside, Nvidia's settings are basically all crammed in one menu (3D Settings), with the rest of the menu options nearly empty or redundant. It's a relic from the past, Nvidia is 20 years behind on this. Also, no overclocking/tweaking, wtf?

You don't get overclocking/tweaking either unless you Full Install Radeon drivers. Wattman is not included in Minimal or Driver Only options. GFE is the equivalent of "Full Install" and includes OC tweaking now.

Why change it if it works perfectly, just because it looks out of date? It's not a program that should be launched evey hour.

 

[AusWolf]

You don't get overclocking/tweaking either unless you Full Install Radeon drivers. Wattman is not included in Minimal or Driver Only options. GFE is the equivalent of "Full Install" and includes OC tweaking now.

Oh does it now? That's cool. Except the fact that you need an online login to use the program. Why?

Why change it if it works perfectly, just because it looks out of date? It's not a program that should be launched evey hour.

It's not just the design. The menu layout is extremely outdated as well, with nearly all options crammed into 3D Settings, and the rest of the menu options nearly empty. The app needs a complete overhaul, not just design-wise.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

You don't get overclocking/tweaking either unless you Full Install Radeon drivers. Wattman is not included in Minimal or Driver Only options. GFE is the equivalent of "Full Install" and includes OC tweaking now.

Why change it if it works perfectly, just because it looks out of date? It's not a program that should be launched evey hour.

why should I need "Geforce Expreince" for overclocking? I don't want all of the other garbage that comes with "Geforce Expreince" in the first place

 

[tabascosauz]

why should I need "Geforce Expreince" for overclocking? I don't want all of the other garbage that comes wit "Geforce Expreince" in the first place

You just contradicted yourself? lol I don't want all the other garbage that is Radeon Software either if I just want certain features that can easily be contained in a Catalyst Control Center-esque app?

If you don't need tuning, you Nvcleanstall without GFE. If you don't need tuning, you Driver Install or Minimal Install Radeon, except the latter still saddles you with unstable as hell Radeon Software......

Oh does it now? That's cool. Except the fact that you need an online login to use the program. Why?


It's not just the design. The menu layout is extremely outdated as well, with nearly all options crammed into 3D Settings, and the rest of the menu options nearly empty. The app needs a complete overhaul, not just design-wise.

Yeah I don't like the login either. GFE and Radeon Software are about on par in my books in terms of stability, not too enthused about either one

I hink everyone would like a UI overhaul but we both know if Nvidia was asked to change anything they would just force us to use GFE for everything ("see, AMD has a one stop shop too!"). But like I said, it's not a program the user spends all day in, so why does it matter if all the options work properly?

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

You just contradicted yourself? lol I don't want all the other garbage that is Radeon Software either if I just want certain features that can easily be contained in a Catalyst Control Center-esque app?

If you don't need tuning, you Nvcleanstall without GFE. If you don't need tuning, you Driver Install or Minimal Install Radeon, except the latter still saddles you with unstable as hell Radeon Software......



Yeah I don't like the login either. GFE and Radeon Software are about on par in my books in terms of stability, not too enthused about either one

I hink everyone would like a UI overhaul but we both know if Nvidia was asked to change anything they would just force us to use GFE for everything ("see, AMD has a one stop shop too!"). But like I said, it's not a program the user spends all day in, so why does it matter if all the options work properly?

to what I know you can't get a minimal install with the tuning without the full geforce expreince, but you mentioned needing to sign in in your other comment. Why should I need to sign in online to overclock my physical Hardware? I'm pretty sure that voliates U.S laws about ownership.

 

[Fluffmeister]

No issues with it at all, it's simple and effective, rarely have to use it frankly.

 

[ARF]

Oh does it now? That's cool. Except the fact that you need an online login to use the program. Why?

They want all your telemetry in order to know exactly what you are doing. Which, of course, is against your will and against the law.
But that's normal for nvidia and its shady shenanigans and crimes in general.

It's not just the design. The menu layout is extremely outdated as well, with nearly all options crammed into 3D Settings, and the rest of the menu options nearly empty. The app needs a complete overhaul, not just design-wise.

Even Intel doesn't allow itself to use the generic Windows layout for its settings windows:

 

[INSTG8R]

I mean I haven't been on an NV card since the Ti4200 128MB and I think it was still the same(I did have a laptop with an 8800M so yeah not total truth)
I mean on the one hand it does have a "vintage" vibe looking like it's back in Win 98...But I mean it really could use a facelift despite of that..

 

[gffermari]

It's simple and it's working fine.
Why change it?