How to Get the Best Gaming Performance with Nvidia Control Panel

PC hardware upgrades are, in many cases, prohibitively expensive these days. Some enthusiasts have even gone so far as to make their own RAM to respond to the soaring prices. So it’s more important than ever to maximize the possible performance of your setup, and changing a few settings in the Nvidia Control Panel can help you achieve this.

First, you can access the Nvidia Control Panel by right-clicking on your desktop, choosing “Show more options”, and then clicking “Nvidia Control Panel”. This is separate from the Nvidia app, which lets you change other gaming-related settings. Here, you’ll see a list of navigation options on the left side. There are some settings you’ll want to enable for the best performance, and others you’ll want to make sure are disabled. Locate the “3D Settings” group in the navigation options (closest to the top of the list) – we’ll start here.

Select the “Manage 3D Settings” option to open the Global Settings page. This is where you can tweak a number of hardware-intensive options like ambient occlusion, anisotropic filtering, and more. Note that if you want to return to the default settings, there is a “Restore” button under the settings options.

Leave “Image Scaling” and “Ambient Occlusion” turned off. Anisotropic filtering, which reduces blur in busy scenes, is the first setting you’ll want to change: it’s probably set to “Application Controlled” by default, but for the best possible performance, set it to “Off.”

Leave all antialiasing settings at default, as they have almost no impact on performance. Next up is “Background Application Max Framerate,” which can be a major boon if you have a dual or triple monitor setup. This, as the name suggests, limits the FPS of any app you don’t currently have focus on. So if you’re playing a game on your primary monitor, you can limit background apps to 30 FPS on your second monitor to reduce the performance impact. The next setting to look at is “Low Latency Mode”, which isn’t as important these days as Nvidia Reflex is usually already enabled in supported games, but setting “Low Latency Mode” to “On” is a good catch-all for performance improvements.

Max Framerate is another one you’ll want to set for optimal performance. You want this setting to be just below your monitor’s refresh rate. So if you have a 120Hz monitor, set the Max Framerate to 117 FPS. This helps minimize latency spikes and you should experience more consistent gameplay. Then, under “Power plan”, select “Prefer maximum performance”. Set “Texture Filtering – Anisotropic Sample Optimization” to “On” for better performance in DirectX programs. “Texture Filtering – Quality” should be set to “High Performance” rather than “Quality”. Once you have changed the settings, be sure to click “Apply” at the bottom right of the window.

Head to “Configure Surround, PhysX” and make sure the PhysX setting is set to your GPU rather than Auto Select. Next, go to “Change Resolution” in the navigation menu and make sure your monitor is set to the appropriate resolution and the highest refresh rate possible.

Next, head to the “Adjust desktop size and position” menu and, if you are not currently using an extended resolution, set the scaling mode to “No scaling”. And that’s it! These are the best Nvidia Control Panel settings for PC gaming. There are a number of other options you can adjust to get the best performance using the Nvidia app, such as configuring G-Sync and disabling overall game optimization. Always be sure to double-check the game settings for performance issues like ray tracing, high shadow quality, and volumetric effects. Outdated GPU drivers can also have a major impact on performance, so make sure they’re up to date!