In the release notes for the latest NVIDIA driver version for Windows, the “AI” company who happens to spare a few GPUs for regular users every now and then has announced that the curtain has fallen for the classic NVIDIA Control Panel.
After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic NVIDIA Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers. For NVIDIA RTX PRO users, the NVIDIA Control Panel will continue to be supported until we have migrated professional features to the NVIDIA app.
Existing installs of the NVIDIA Control Panel will remain on users’ systems, unless they perform a clean installation, and users who still need the NVIDIA Control Panel can continue to download it from the Microsoft Store, but we won’t be adding features, fixes, or other changes.
↫ NVIDIA GeForce driver release notes
According to NVIDIA, every setting has migrated from the Control Panel to the NVIDIA application, meaning it’s no longer necessary to keep maintaining it. Of course, the NVIDIA application also happens to have ads, a login mechanism, and is probably just an inefficient web application, so not everybody may be excited about the loss of the NVIDIA Control Panel.
It says “Please note, GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.97 WHQL, or newer, is required to use all features.” Does that mean 595.97 is the first version that sucks and I should archive whatever came immediately prior in case I ever want to run something newer than Windows 7 on a secondary PC?
(Aside from when I’m booting Batocera Linux off a USB stick, I generally run 474.11 on my “game console but not a console” machines, since that’s the last version nVidia released before Microsoft shut down WHQL signing for Windows 7, and those “remove the Test Mode watermark” tools have never worked reliably for me, but I have also got 475.14 on the Samba share where I keep my reinstallation supplies. Luckily, nVidia says both will work for everything PCIe that I might care to use from the GTX 670s I got for $35 CAD apiece up to the RTX 3060 12GiB that I run on my Linux daily driver and intend to continue to use until it fails in a way I can’t fix.)
…and yeah, my approach to reinstalling old machines tends to be:
1. Use PXE booting to prepare the drive.
2. Boot off either a the CD (for something like WinXP) or the freshly SYS’d drive (DOS/Win9x) and install.
3. Use PXE-booted Linux to copy the network driver in.
4. Boot the new OS, install the network driver, and install everything else from the Samba share.
(For Mac OS, similar, but Netatalk.)
Out of honest curiosity:
Why do you use Nvidia Control Panel?
I just install the driver without any bangs and whistles, and it works without any tinkering. Am I missing something?
Some settings like such as pixel format (YCbCr vs RGB), what chroma subsampling you want (if you use YCbCr), and choosing between PC levels vs TV levels (aka RGB 16-235 vs RGB 0-255) are available only through the Nvidia Contol Panel, Windows has no such options (unless your laptop has Nvidia Optimus, in which case you’ll have to find those in the iGPU settings). Also some 3D acceleration related settings are available only through the Nvidia Control Panel (this is true even if your laptop has Nvidia Optimus).
In the past, Nvidia Control Panel was also where you configured stereoscopic 3D and SLI settings from, but those are gone now.
cevvalkoala,
I don’t even remember what the nvidia control panel on windows looks like, however on linux the nvidia application is useful for configuring multiple monitors to work side by side (or say a projector).
On a TV screen I’ve used it to reduce the resolution to make text more legible (says something about how bad typical software is at high DPI). Obviously many users don’t need it, but when you have a reason to use it it’s nice that it’s there.
On my Windows 7 “game console but not a console”, I use it for winecfg-esque application-specific overrides like forcing VSync=ON to prevent games without internal VSync options from causing unnecessary fan noise.
(I’ve considered applying an unofficial “disable broken UEFI GOP support” patch for the motherboard so it can POST with post-6xx cards and upgrading it from a GTX670 to a GTX980 to halve how much heat it has to dissipate for the same work, purely to complement the Noctua fans I put in it.)
Also, I don’t know whether it’s necessary with nVidia, but I know that back when I was using an older Radeon in that machine, I had to manually force the pixel format to get it, my HDMI KVM switch, and my monitor on the same page.
I’d still be doing the same things if I built it with newer hardware and a newer OS.
It has been a while since i had a nvidia card (dual 980ti) and i dont know the big deal about this. everyone had both Odin and NvidiaProfiler installed anyways and thus the nvidia control panel was redundant. On linux however the nvidia application is rather nice and simple.