Nvidia Control Panel is a companion app for Nvidia graphics cards, used to manage settings and features specific to your GPU, which can help optimize its relationship with your display and your gaming experience. While it has many legacy settings that aren't used by modern games in most situations, it's still worth tweaking a few settings in Nvidia Control Panel to optimize gaming performance and ensure you aren't missing out on your GPU features in any way.

The new Nvidia app has some overlap with Nvidia Control Panel in terms of the video and performance settings, but you can still rely on the latter, until Nvidia decides to phase it out like it did with Nvidia GeForce Experience. While Nvidia Control Panel has tons of settings, most of them can be left at their default values. The six settings I'm sharing below, however, might result in actual performance improvements, depending on your system and display.

6 Customize resolution

Overclock your resolution and refresh rate

Setting the resolution only to your monitor's native resolution is recommended for the majority of gamers, but some users might want to set it to a custom setting. Technically, you can brute-force anti-aliasing by setting a resolution higher than your monitor's native resolution, or even set a higher refresh rate than your monitor's maximum. If you've been looking to experiment with this, navigate to Change resolution under the Display section on the left panel in Nvidia Control Panel.

1. Under Choose the resolution, click Customize, then select Create Custom Resolution. Accept the warning message that opens.
2. You can now set a custom resolution, refresh rate, and other advanced settings if you know what you're doing. Remember to click Apply if you're making any changes in this section.

5 Set up G-SYNC

Just making sure

You might already be using G-SYNC or FreeSync on your gaming monitor, but some users new to PC gaming might have it turned off in Nvidia Control Panel. If you've been experiencing screen tearing in games, it's worth spending a few seconds to check out if everything is set up correctly in Nvidia Control Panel.

1. Click Set up G-SYNC under the Display section.
2. At the top, ensure Enable G-SYNC, G-SYNC Compatible is ticked.
3. It's recommended to select Enable for windowed and full screen mode.
4. Click Apply to save your changes.

G-SYNC or FreeSync will synchronize your monitor's refresh rate to the FPS your GPU is outputting to remove unwanted artifacts. Even if you see a warning saying that your display is not G-SYNC compatible, it simply means that Nvidia hasn't validated your particular monitor model. Any FreeSync or Adaptive Sync display will work just fine as long as you have the Enable G-SYNC, G-SYNC Compatible setting turned on.

4 Power Management Mode

Choose between performance and power consumption

The Power management mode setting allows you to dial in your desired power profile for your Nvidia GPU. Most people should leave this at its default setting, but if you're experiencing weird issues in games, especially when pausing and unpausing or "Alt + Tabbing," then you should give this one a quick look.

1. Click Manage 3D settings under the 3D settings section on the left.
2. Scroll down and click Power management mode to see the options available.
3. You might see Normal, Adaptive, Optimal, and Prefer maximum performance, or a combination of these options in the drop-down.
4. I leave mine on Normal, but you can try Prefer maximum performance to make the GPU run at maximum power regardless of the game's current demand. This can improve performance, but will increase power consumption and GPU temperature. It might keep your FPS more consistent, though, when the GPU load fluctuates from high to low and back. Experiment with it and see if you get favorable results.
5. You can choose Normal, Optimal, or Adaptive to allow the game to automatically boost the GPU when it needs more power, and vice-versa.

This setting will be of more interest to laptop users, since the trade-off between power consumption and performance is a crucial one. Desktop users will not usually worry about this, unless the power costs in their areas are significant.

3 Low Latency Mode

Keep it snappy

Not to be confused with Nvidia Reflex, the Low Latency Mode setting can be used to prioritize lower latency over maximum performance by limiting the number of frames the CPU has in the render queue. By default, this setting is set to Off, which means games are allowed to fill the render queue with additional frames before the GPU is ready to receive them.

If you switch the setting to On or Ultra, it will reduce these queued frames and supply them to the GPU just as it needs them, minimizing any latency introduced by frame queueing. This should not impact the performance if your GPU is capable of supplying enough frames for your display's refresh rate.

1. Click Manage 3D settings under the 3D settings section on the left.
2. Scroll down and click Low Latency Mode to bring up the drop-down options.
3. Choose On or Ultra to minimize latency, depending on how aggressive you want the setting to be.

This setting is particularly helpful in competitive games where every little improvement in latency and response time matters. Your mileage may vary, though, depending on your CPU.

2 Max Frame Rate

Too many frames can be bad sometimes

As the name implies, the Max Frame Rate setting allows you to set a maximum frame rate if you don't want your games to exceed a certain FPS number. This can prove useful in games that can easily exceed your monitor's refresh rate, such as Valorant and Counter-Strike 2, since FreeSync and G-SYNC will only work within a certain range. Beyond your monitor's max refresh rate, the game will default to your Virtual Sync setting, which, if turned on, can introduce input latency.

Hence, setting a max FPS can be beneficial in keeping your game's performance within the variable refresh rate range of your monitor. Alternatively, you can leave this setting untouched if you want an unlocked FPS, and want to benefit from the benefits that come with insanely high frame rates.

1. Click Manage 3D settings under the 3D settings section on the left.
2. Scroll down and click Max Frame Rate. Click the drop-down, and select the maximum frame rate you want to set.
3. Click OK.

1 Monitor Technology

Use the full power of FreeSync or G-SYNC

Monitor Technology allows you to choose which variable refresh rate (VRR) tech you want to use on your monitor. It also gives you the option to select a fixed refresh rate, which some competitive players might want to use to get a consistent frame rate. While Set Up G-SYNC allows you to enable VRR, the Monitor Technology setting gives you more options.

1. Click Manage 3D settings under the 3D settings section on the left.
2. Scroll down and click Monitor Technology. Click on the drop-down and select G-SYNC or G-SYNC Compatible. These are the ideal choices for this setting.
3. Click Apply to save any changes.

Ensure you're using the right Nvidia Control Panel settings

Nvidia Control Panel might have an outdated UI and many legacy settings that aren't useful anymore, but it's still necessary when you want to check if a few critical settings are configured the way you want. The Low Latency Mode and Power management mode settings can have a big impact on your gaming experience by providing smoother gameplay and better FPS respectively.

Other settings like Max Frame Rate and customizing the resolution can be helpful to some users in certain use cases, making them worth considering. If you've moved on to the new Nvidia app, you might find some of these settings in that program, but not all. Until the day Nvidia makes Nvidia Control Panel redundant, it will remain an important companion app for owners of Nvidia GPUs.