Nvidia plans to lock Game Ready drivers behind GeForce Experience registration

TaintedSquirrel

TaintedSquirrel

[H]F Junkie
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/2993...s-behind-geforce-experience-registration.html

“We kind of have two camps in terms of gamers,” Nvidia’s Sean Pelletier said in a group call with journalists. “On one hand you have the gamer that’s just casually playing things here and there, using their system for daily use and gaming on the side. They don’t want to be inundated with these [Game Ready] drivers…

“On the other side of the equation you have enthusiast gamers, who get excited about preloading a game, who want to play a game the day it comes out with all the bells and whistles,” Pelletier continued. “That’s obviously the demographic we’re looking at for Game Ready drivers. We’re targeting GFE as a single-source destination for those gamers.”
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Really? Really Nvidia?
3uSx6X5.gif
 
Apparently they are trying to get people to use GFE and this is probably a last ditch effort to push their unneeded bloatware.
 
cyclone3d said:
Apparently they are trying to get people to use GFE and this is probably a last ditch effort to push their unneeded bloatware.
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GFE is the most broken piece of shit I have ever dealt with, dear god. Everytime I launch that useless turd my PC feels like locking up while it scans my entire 4TB HDD for fucking games i don't really give a shit about. It takes me longer to open up GFE to update my drivers than it does to just download them from their site.
 
I disable the automatic scanning and recommended settings and have no issues with it. If I could install a ShadowPlay only component, I would probably remove GFE though
 
for me this isn't worth throwing a fit over but it's definitely unwelcome. i've never installed GFE, guess i'll have to now.
 
I had a feeling Nvidia would try to force GFE upon users eventually but this method of locking Game Ready drivers behind it is beyond stupid...so how long will users who don't opt-in to GFE have to wait before the drivers are available?
 
Only thing i've used GFE for is for ShadowPlay, and it works pretty well. I have most things within GFE disabled though.
 
polonyc2 said:
...so how long will users who don't opt-in to GFE have to wait before the drivers are available?
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from the article: "The drivers you can grab on GeForce.com or via Windows Update will be limited to quarterly releases"

so too long for most people.
 
Porter_ said:
from the article: "The drivers you can grab on GeForce.com or via Windows Update will be limited to quarterly releases"

so too long for most people.
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I don't update my drivers every time a new one is released so it might be fine for me...most Game Ready drivers don't offer huge performance gains unless the game is somehow broken to begin with...the recent Battlefront drivers offered no improvements over the last official drivers...still a stupid idea by Nvidia but at least there not forcing everyone to use GFE
 
i agree it's good they're not forcing it on everyone but Battlefront/Battlefield is a great example of why quarterly releases are too slow for me. during the early stages of BF4 i was updating drivers at every opportunity just for the sake of minimizing one of the many variables contributing to crashes etc.
 
So this can be easily fixed by just uninstalling geforce experience after a driver update ?

Also there will be probably someone releasing the drivers without the bloatware in guru3d for example..
 
This needs a new term....

DRIVERZ !

Now they'll be cracks for drivers right besides the Warez section... ;)
 
Yakk said:
This needs a new term....

DRIVERZ !

Now they'll be cracks for drivers right besides the Warez section... ;)
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That could be funny...tin-foil-hatters getting malware due to their own actions :D
 
Factum said:
Could somebody point me to the trouble with GFE?

Because my bet is...tinfoil hat ignorance is in the driver seat of those whining right now.
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GFE breaks often. Sometimes the downloader doesn't work. Sometimes it breaks the driver install process. Sometimes it downloads the wrong driver. Sometimes it causes bluescreens. Sometimes it will jack up your resource usage.

You may not get any of these issues, but they exist for various users.

And that is exactly why some people (including me) refuse to install it.
 
Factum said:
Could somebody point me to the trouble with GFE?

Because my bet is...tinfoil hat ignorance is in the driver seat of those whining right now.
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I honestly don't know. All the anecdotes I have seen seem to point to deeper issues with the user's system rather than specifically GFE. GFE has always worked fine for me and takes up minimal resources. I keep it installed primarily for the slipstreamed profile updates.

The issue with this move for me is not that you will only be able to get the Game Ready drivers through GFE, but the fact that it is yet another thing that I would have register to for "free" in order to get them. Nothing pisses me off more on the internet than needing a "free" account for anything other than online stores and forums.
 
I'm OK with this. I've been using GFE since it's early inception, and it's come a long, long way. Still has some kinks that need to be addressed (especially the slow launch/load times of the app itself), but overall, I've been pleased with it and it's functionality. The auto-optimizations have gotten a hell of a lot better based on the specific game and type of GPU(s) utilized. I see it as still a work in progress, but they are continuing to actively develop it.
 
1397693594110.gif



Wouldn't it make more sense to let the ultra-casuals get handled by GFE hand-holding and let the enthusiasts do what they want?
 
polonyc2 said:
I had a feeling Nvidia would try to force GFE upon users eventually but this method of locking Game Ready drivers behind it is beyond stupid...so how long will users who don't opt-in to GFE have to wait before the drivers are available?
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AMD WHQL driver release time. :p
 
cyclone3d said:
Apparently they are trying to get people to use GFE and this is probably a last ditch effort to push their unneeded bloatware.
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Just the opposite. Most people already get their drivers through GFE.

The hand-wringing and whining about GFE is hilarious. You guys realize it doesn't do anything you don't allow it to, right?
 
LigTasm said:
1397693594110.gif



Wouldn't it make more sense to let the ultra-casuals get handled by GFE hand-holding and let the enthusiasts do what they want?
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It probably scans your PC and reports back what you have installed to Nvidia. That type of information would be incredibly useful to a corporation like Nvidia. No, I don't have proof that it does. It just makes sense that it would check out your system to make recommendations on settings for your games.

Nvidia Geforce Experience; the Facebook of PC Gaming! It already has a 82% market penetration. They just need you to relent your information to the hive mind.

Of course I'm just having a bit of fun with this. Don't get upset. :)
 
AceCR42 said:
GFE breaks often. Sometimes the downloader doesn't work. Sometimes it breaks the driver install process. Sometimes it downloads the wrong driver. Sometimes it causes bluescreens. Sometimes it will jack up your resource usage.

You may not get any of these issues, but they exist for various users.

And that is exactly why some people (including me) refuse to install it.
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And why don't I have those issues?
 
cageymaru said:
It probably scans your PC and reports back what you have installed to Nvidia. That type of information would be incredibly useful to a corporation like Nvidia. No, I don't have proof that it does. It just makes sense that it would check out your system to make recommendations on settings for your games.

Nvidia Geforce Experience; the Facebook of PC Gaming! It already has a 82% market penetration. They just need you to relent your information to the hive mind.

Of course I'm just having a bit of fun with this. Don't get upset. :)
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I ain't even mad. TBH I don't mind GFE like I do AMD's whateveritscalled thing that sends me emails 45,789 times a week about shit I don't want to know and nags me constantly if I forget to uncheck that box when I install my drivers.
 
Armenius said:
I honestly don't know. All the anecdotes I have seen seem to point to deeper issues with the user's system rather than specifically GFE. GFE has always worked fine for me and takes up minimal resources. I keep it installed primarily for the slipstreamed profile updates.
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I agree..I bet if you got a hold of a system with problems, the error would be somewhere else.
We see it all the time...users having some crap 3rd party software screwing up their systems and they blame the software that gets broken and not the proper culprit.
 
Factum said:
Could somebody point me to the trouble with GFE?

Because my bet is...tinfoil hat ignorance is in the driver seat of those whining right now.
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Because I don't need it? Therefore it's bloatware. And fuck everyone that's trying to push bloatware on people. And registration is a hassle. Why the fuck should I register to get the best avaialable drivers for my hardware? It has nothing to do with being afraid of "oh they'll track my gaming habits, zomg".
 
Terpfen said:
Just the opposite. Most people already get their drivers through GFE.

The hand-wringing and whining about GFE is hilarious. You guys realize it doesn't do anything you don't allow it to, right?
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Ignorance is the new "black" on tech-forums it seems.
 
If I still had SLI I don't think I'd be happy with this so called, 'change'. I went back to a single powerful GPU setup to avoid having to download a new driver every time a new major realease came out, not to mention all of the issues some of the fun Indie games I like to play have with multi-GPU setups. As a single GPU user I can live with quarterly releases. I don't NEED GFE, or Game Ready Drivers, which still aren't that great anyway.

I am an enthusiast/minimalist in the sense that I only install what my machine needs to run at it's peak. So when it comes to graphics related software, for me it's the graphics drivers, and Physics drivers and that's it. No extra "fluff". When I want to stream I use OBS. Which can still off load computations from the CPU to GPU (like Shadowplay), and has far more features and options than Shadow play. I have a nice powerful CPU anyway, so really I have no issues with things like OBS.

Any modern machine with an i5/i7 or equivalant, and an SSD should never have to worry about streaming or anything like that unless they are trying to stream at the max bitrate, with the highest CPU preset at 1080p60. If that's the case then you should already be a Twitch partner, and have a streaming PC, or a deticated capture card by that point.
 
GFE sucks, so does the AMD gaming evolved. Stop wasiting time on crap software and fix the drivers with that time instead.
 
NickJames said:
GFE is the most broken piece of shit I have ever dealt with, dear god. Everytime I launch that useless turd my PC feels like locking up while it scans my entire 4TB HDD for fucking games i don't really give a shit about. It takes me longer to open up GFE to update my drivers than it does to just download them from their site.
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I can't remember this stuff off the top of my head, but there's an area in GFE where you tell it the locations of your games, if you don't want it to scan anything, point it to a folder that has nothing in it; it will scan it but find nothing so it should just stop immediately.
 
Proxy said:
If I still had SLI I don't think I'd be happy with this so called, 'change'. I went back to a single powerful GPU setup to avoid having to download a new driver every time a new major realease came out, not to mention all of the issues some of the fun Indie games I like to play have with multi-GPU setups. As a single GPU user I can live with quarterly releases. I don't NEED GFE, or Game Ready Drivers, which still aren't that great anyway.

I am an enthusiast/minimalist in the sense that I only install what my machine needs to run at it's peak. So when it comes to graphics related software, for me it's the graphics drivers, and Physics drivers and that's it. No extra "fluff". When I want to stream I use OBS. Which can still off load computations from the CPU to GPU (like Shadowplay), and has far more features and options than Shadow play. I have a nice powerful CPU anyway, so really I have no issues with things like OBS.

Any modern machine with an i5/i7 or equivalant, and an SSD should never have to worry about streaming or anything like that unless they are trying to stream at the max bitrate, with the highest CPU preset at 1080p60. If that's the case then you should already be a Twitch partner, and have a streaming PC, or a deticated capture card by that point.
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Yeah...real "fluf" here:
2vrwhw4.png


Oh noes...THE MEGABYTES...
 
Factum said:
Could somebody point me to the trouble with GFE?

Because my bet is...tinfoil hat ignorance is in the driver seat of those whining right now.
Click to expand...

It can cause trouble. I don't have any analysis as to what the issue is, but I've seen it. I had it on my system running Windows 8.1, all was well. When I reinstalled to 10, it started having issues with grabbing lots of CPU. Didn't do it all the time, but would get real grabby with one core for no apparent reason. I didn't have the UI launched of anything, I'd just see its process start to gobble CPU, then settle down again, then gobble CPU again.

So off it went, since I didn't need that interfering with things. I may try it again later.
 
djoye said:
I can't remember this stuff off the top of my head, but there's an area in GFE where you tell it the locations of your games, if you don't want it to scan anything, point it to a folder that has nothing in it; it will scan it but find nothing so it should just stop immediately.
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Yup, I guess most people whining actually never used the software:

14j6qsy.png
 
Sycraft said:
It can cause trouble. I don't have any analysis as to what the issue is, but I've seen it. I had it on my system running Windows 8.1, all was well. When I reinstalled to 10, it started having issues with grabbing lots of CPU. Didn't do it all the time, but would get real grabby with one core for no apparent reason. I didn't have the UI launched of anything, I'd just see its process start to gobble CPU, then settle down again, then gobble CPU again.

So off it went, since I didn't need that interfering with things. I may try it again later.
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Did you think that it's the setting to scan your folders on a daily basis, which you can disable?
 
Factum said:
Yeah...real "fluf" here:
2vrwhw4.png


Oh noes...THE MEGABYTES...
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Like some users I have seen the additional NV services eat away at more reasources than that. For those that might be using a less powerful rig I can see how it might impact the experience. Either way, if you don't NEED a certain piece of software or a feature it offers, why install it?

GFE is just marketing BS at its best anyway. Rewind the clock back to the 8800 GTX days, and before that even, when SLI was first reintroduced with the 6800 Ultra's. There were no "game ready drivers", just drivers. If a new game came out, you played the game just fine, and if a driver set came out that dramatically improved anything only then would most bother to update. The exception for that being SLi, if you had SLi you needed to update the drivers for SLi support; even then, for some games you could make your own SLi profile.

To me all this "GAME READY" and "GEFORE EXPERIENCE!!!" is just marketing at it's best and hasn't really done much for adding new features that mean anything. At least that's how it looks to me when I take a step back and look at it all.

OMG ARE YOU READY FOR BATTLE FRONT? GET OUR NEW SUPERCHARGED OMGSOUCEBBQ DRIVERS NOW! OPTIMIZED JUST FOR YOU!!! BECOME A SUPER PRO MLG GAM3R NOW!
 
I have GFE installed and I never even notice it except when I go in to turn ShadowPlay on/off.

It's definitely not bloatware. I mean maybe if you have the auto-scanning of games enabled, but you can turn that off and it persists through new driver installs, so you literally have to uncheck that setting the first time you install your NVIDIA card and never have to touch it again.

I think gating drivers behind an application is stupid, but this isn't anything I am going to get too upset about. I have been leaving GFE running in the background for a while now and it's never caused me any issues, so oh well.
 
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