How To: Bring Back the “Performance” Tab in NVIDIA Control Panel

For some people, the NVIDIA Control Panel does not have the “Performance” tab. This can be due to either of the below reasons:

1] You recently updated your NVIDIA Graphics drivers

2] You have a laptop or a device with an integrated graphics processor (GPU) and a dedicated NVIDIA graphics processor, both

3] You are literally blind and cannot see the “Performance” tab while it’s right in front of you. But then again, how did you even get to the NVIDIA Control Panel if you are blind? *Cue the X-Files soundtrack here*

Anyway, this is going to be a quick one, so if you have ADHD, this is your lucky day! 

Step 1: Download the NVIDIA System Tools

Go to the official page of NVIDIA’s System Tools, here.

You should see this page:

Click on the green DOWNLOAD button, and—obviously—download the tool.

Step 2: Install the tool

Go to the location in your system where the file has downloaded, and run the installation.

Keep clicking on all the “Next”s (there will be quite a few of them) and finally, on “Finish” when asked. Make sure your installation process has the options “NVIDIA Performance” and “NVIDIA System monitos” checked.

Step 3: Go to the NVIDIA Control Panel

Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, and now you will see the “Developer” and “Performance” tabs on the left. But do not get so excited and leave this post right now, the most crucial step is yet to come.

One last thing. Many settings are still locked, so head over to the “Accept End User License Agreement” option inside the “Performance” tab as shown below, and click on the “Agree” button in the right window.

Step 4: Congratulate yourself

Two yays for you, you now have a functioning “Performance” tab in your NVIDIA Control Panel. Yes, some of the options might be grayed out for you or disabled, but that is normal. That means those settings cannot be applied for your GPU. A few options are better than no options and an almost empty NVIDIA Control Panel’s left panel.

Now, you can play around with the custom clock speeds and other settings (do not worry about breaking anything, the settings are all under the safe maximum thresholds by default, so even the highest settings here will not do any harm if you have good cooling in your system) and make custom profiles for your games.