Is it fine to exit the NVIDIA Tray Icon?

Question

I was under the impression that NVIDIA is a "native" thing and is thus important to be kept running.

But even after I've exited it, I don't realize anything wrong with my computer..

But of course I can't trust my senses here, so basically does anyone know is it OK to close NVIDIA?

Acer Aspire 4937G, Windows Vista Home Premium SP2

Answer 1

If you were to close that program, you would only be closing the control panel. The drivers for your display adapter would still be loaded (in fact, they are loaded at boot, instead of being loaded at Windows start, like the nVidia control panel is). So, closing it would not do anything but free up a little bit of memory on your computer.

If you were to unload the drivers for the display itself, you would simply see Windows revert back to the default, stripped down VGA driver, and you'd just lose all your 3D acceleration and higher resolutions. But to do that, you would have to go under the device manager, where it will let you click "uninstall driver for this device".

Answer 2

What you are exiting is the "NVIdia control panel" - while it has controls and maintenance related to your card, it is not the cards driver, and is quite safe to exit.

Answer 3

I understand that the control panel is for settings editing only: no funcionality is lost if you close it.

In my case, the control panel kept crashing and bringing the computer to a crawl; if I closed the tray icon, and disabled and re-enabled the gpu in Device Manager, the computer would be normal again.

So it would be best if you closed the tray icon, if the NVidia control panel kept crashing.