Comments Locked

54 Comments

Back to Article

  • limitedaccess - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    I don't really understand why they would want to be doing this though for the drivers.

    This just seems like it is going to draw fire from at least a vocal minority crowd and cause massive controversy. While I don't see how have simultaneous website driver releases really is any significant added cost?
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    To their credit, NVIDIA has been on a path to make PC gaming as simple as possible for the masses - the 90% that use GFE simply because it installs by default. The downside, IMO, is that simplicity comes with a price. To build a console ecosystem on the PC, you need to utilizes proprietary software, services, and devices (GFE, G-Sync, SHIELD, GameWorks, GRID, etc.) to establish a common experience. What's clear is that NVIDIA is striving to compete with Sony and Microsoft, not AMD.

    Valve has been trying to do this all through software, but is quickly learning that getting hardware out in the world is just as important. Microsoft tried (and failed) with GFWL and is trying again with Xbox Live for Windows 10 and more integration with Xbone, but neither company seems to be offering anywhere near the features of the NVIDIA ecosystem for the PC.
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    God forbid the masses need to make a mental effort in order to do something. Next thing you know, people begin using their heads for something other than a balancing weight and a place to put fancy hats.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    It's not really about intelligence. I would argue that time savings drives more of this than anything else. Most people that I know that choose consoles over PC gaming don't do so due to a lack of intelligence or ambition, but do so because they "just want to play a game without the hassle" between mowing the lawn and putting the kids to bed.

    While it's fun to spend 5 hours or 5 days running benchmarks and tweaking clockspeeds and cooling systems to achieve the best performance, some people would rather being playing games all that time even if the textures are bad and the frame rate gets choppy. "It just works" is more than just a marketing phrase.

    As long as NVIDIA doesn't remove the option for the 10% that want full control over everything, what is there to complain about?
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    It's not really about what it is the product of, but what is its product. The first guy to order food delivered to his home probably didn't do it because he couldn't cook, but a few generations into it, and then you have it - people who couldn't cook a meal if their life depended on it.

    Nvidia is pushing things like game streaming, which involves significant latency that only a slob will be ok with, this could not possibly compare to running a game on your own machine.

    The nonsense about wasting 5 days into optimizing your system is just that - nonsense, you could not possibly squeeze enough performance out of that to make it a game changer. It is just what the industry wants people to believe is being spared.

    Leaving others to do your thinking is intrinsically bad, this is why today we eat garbage, drink garbage and breathe garbage. Because we listened to some "good person" who offered to do it for us, even though he didn't gave a broken dime about us.

    When you use progress, your life gets better, when the industry uses progress to package YOU as the product in order to milk you better, the end result is degradation.
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    In short, the "geforece experience" - it sucks, but it is easy. So better lower your standards and just be a happy camper, after all, the whole purpose is making money on you. Be a good piece of cattle and make your milking easier.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    That's a strange argument. I don't know about you, but I don't know everything, and I don't excel at every single thing. No one person could ever. I'm great with computing, but not very good at gardening. I'm great at cooking, but not very good at baking. I feel no shame relying on others to grow vegetables and make bread that I can easily buy in the store. Yes, I know that those breads and produce I buy cost way more in the store than it would be to do it myself... but does that make a person lazy or a slob?

    Likewise, I enjoy building my own desktop computers and my own desks to place them on, but I won't hesitate to buy a router or network cables if I can avoid building my own. Why? Because I got sh*t to do! LOL

    We should be so lucky that PC gaming has come far enough that there are options like this for people that would otherwise never consider getting into PC gaming.
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Granted, no one person is capable of knowing and being able to do everything, but hey, baking is not rocket science. It probably won't take for you a long time to learn it.

    Then again, there is the prospect of saving yourself the time. You could have a friend bake for you, and in exchange you cook for him. That's all good, because it will still be about baking. bread.

    But in the industry it is not about baking bread. It is about profit. I have found mercury in bread, and guess what, that factory which produced it is still working.

    They market is as if it is done for the sake of your comfort, but in reality it is for the sake of their comfort. The industry will NEVER EVER make a concession for the sake of the consumer. They will evaluate what is better for them, and they will market it as if it is better for you. They will wrap it up in some meaningless fad and try convincing people it is the best thing since sliced bread. And the sellout media will pick that up. Stream 4k content for gaming, which involves user reaction, and marketing that as a good thing - that's ridiculous. They don't do it because they care about your comfort or experience, they do it because they have estimated it will be more profitable for them, and your poor gaming experience is a small price to pay for their comfort.

    You don't buy a router because it is too much of a hassle to "build" one, but because there is no option to do it. You can buy PC components and assemble a system, but you can't do that for a router. You have NO CHOICE but to purchase one, most likely plagued by security flaws and backdoors installed by either the manufacturer, or when the NSA intercepted the hardware shipment.

    I mean, if there was the option to build your own router, and it have you the degree of flexibility you get from building your own system, I have zero doubts you will invest the ... like 10 minutes it would take to assemble those components into a working router unit. But you can't, you don't even have that option. You could pick up a microcontroller, design your own circuit, write your own software and build a router this way, but it will take a lot of time and effort, it will be proportional to "building a PC" by means of designing your own CPU and GPU, go through the manufacturing and so forth - practically impossible to do as an individual.
  • Morawka - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    ddriver, welcome to life bud

    in order for any company/person to make a profit (or money for that matter), they need to have something someone else wants.

    That's life man.
  • Morawka - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    yes i'm gonna be vauge and not mention examples for you to string out and try and make a philosophical debate on it's merits. But just think about it, they couldn't make a profit on those things if people did not want them.
  • kaesden - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    you do too have an option to build a router. slap together an old pc, throw in some gigabit nics and load up linux, or some other capable OS and configure it as a router. So hop to it. Throw away your commercial router and go build one. it only takes 10 minutes right?
  • Anonymous Blowhard - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    > Nvidia is pushing things like game streaming, which involves significant latency that only a slob will be ok with, this could not possibly compare to running a game on your own machine.

    Found the guy who's never used streaming. Latency is sub-frame (~78ms) on a good network. Your input device will add more perceived latency than streaming will.
  • Anonymous Blowhard - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Okay, apparently markup doesn't like the minus sign. "~78ms" should be "~7 to 8ms"
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    LOL, this is a complete lie. It is practically impossible to encode, transfer and decode a HD frame in that amount of time. In reality latency is above 100 milliseconds, which is impeding and annoying.

    Heck, you have more latency outputting the video to a monitor over a 10+ gigabit interface, and you claim 7-8 ms... This is not even possible on high grade real time audio systems, and audio is so much less demanding than video.

    You are either a shameless liar, or completely clueless, potentially even both.
  • willis936 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    check some proper monitor latency measurements on sites like tftcentral. You'd be surprised how low latency those high bandwidth interfaces are. They measure from signal input to pixel display and if that is sub 10 ms I would be very surprised if the interface makes up most of that time.
  • XabanakFanatik - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Not sure how you think 78ms is sub-frame. At 30 hz, one frame is 33ms and at 60 hz its 16 ms. That's a good 3-5 frame delay depending on your refresh rate.
  • ddriver - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    He obviously has no idea what he is talking about. A blind man could see that from a mile away.
  • ZeDestructor - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    He said in the comment right below that the markup chopped off the "-" sign between 7 and 8. He meant to say 7-8ms.
  • JoeMonco - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    So why aren't you still using a computer that requires constantly flipping switches to control? You too stupid?
  • zlatan - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Microsoft failed because if somebody want a console-like experience will just buy a console.
  • nandnandnand - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    GameStream is like that defunct company OnLive, right?
  • yllanos27 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Not quite, Gamestream is meant to stream from PCs to Shield Console, mostly on a local network. OnLive was supposed to deliver cloud-based gaming (through Internet). I think OnLive was eventually acquired by SONY
  • Primeey - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    I do not want to install geforce experience just for bloody driver updates.
  • Black Obsidian - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    I'd be happier if nVidia didn't feel the need to release drivers on what feels like a bi-weekly basis.

    Say what you will about AMD's "beta" drivers, but their release was infrequent and they worked just fine.
  • ZeDestructor - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    nV push their game profile updates via GFE now, rather than the drivers. For myself, I wish they'd let me install GFE and game profiles on my mobile Quadro cared, but noooo
  • Primeey - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    You would be happier if Nvidia stopped frequently releasing driver for games? I'd rather have a driver before or on the launch of a game instead of weeks after launch like with AMD
  • DParadoxx - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    As a gamer and a developer I don't understand why people have this attitude. Why would you not want features/fixes asap? If there's nothing for you in the release notes don't install it.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Agreed. And I definitely don't want another useless user account, which is going to be stolen as quickly as I create it. Well, almost.
  • EdgeOfDetroit - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    9/10 users are idiots. GeForce Experience has been tied to all kinds of problems, and you shouldn't install anything that you don't need if you want the maximum CPU horsepower and internet bandwidth available to your games, so that you get the best framerates and pings. I have no intention of installing GeForce Experience now or ever, because I'm a power user - gamer, not some brain-dead "gamer" in the loosest definition of the word. Nvidia is jumping the Windows 10 shark with this change. I have a GTX980 and I realize that Nvidia is just plain superior and have no intention of changing, but I guess I'll be on the quarterly driver update cadence now. AMD just got one step closer to having better GPUs for me.
  • imaheadcase - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Nothing wrong with Geforce experience, i've had zero problems with it. Sounds like you just don't want to adapt or learn anything new.
  • Zak - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    It doesn't give me anything I find useful, I don't need to have software installed on my PC that doesn't do anything for me. I don't record or stream games, I tweak them myself and I like to download and install drivers myself. I tried GE few times and it misconfigured my games terribly and always got stuck installing driver update. I don't want to learn anything or adapt to anything that doesn't give clear benefit.
  • yllanos27 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Nothing wrong on my side either.

    Have you tried a recent version?
  • ZeDestructor - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    [citation needed]

    On my machine: no measurable extra CPU usage (except when it bugs out), some increased RAM usage (about 200MiB.. on a machine with 32GiB of RAM) and no internet usage until it downloads updates or stream (verified using my router).
  • greyhulk - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    This program pretty consistently runs away with CPU clock cycles every time it's installed. When the fix that, call me.
  • Morawka - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    High Profile AAA Games rarely use over 30% CPU Cycles as it is... Witcher 3, for example, uses 35% on my 4790K @ 1440p.. That's a high resolution.

    The actual video decoding is built into the GPU DIE itself, so no wasted resources there, its a hardware encoder. Smartphone cpu/gpu's use these dedicated hardware blocks religiously. so do consoles.

    GFE is a great tool that lets you "just start playing games". If you think about it, How GFE works, you really have to marvell at what nvidia has done here. They simitaniously test a game on all resolutions, on all CPU hardware (i3, i7, amd, etc.) and on all graphics cards, (GTX 480, 580, 660, etc..) in a matter of hours, and find the optimal image quality, and performance profiles.

    It doesn't matter if you use it or not, what nvidia has done here is showing the power of GRID and Cloud computing and is a pillar of software complexity.

    Nvidia is trying to make PC gaming as simple as console gaming, to lure more gamers to the master race. Rather you like AMD or Nvidia, this is good for PC Gaming.
  • LinkTiger - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Now if only they'd allow driver updates to be triggered by Standard users (with a UAC prompt, of course; this is kernel-level code they're updating). Right now, on Windows 7, graphics driver updates are the only thing that I can't do from my Standard User account, even with UAC and right-click "Run as Administrator".
  • Zak - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    This is just stupid. I don't care for GeForce Experience. The few times I used it it misconfigured my games badly and it was never able to complete a drive update.
  • yllanos27 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    What is interesting to me is that there is no comment about what are they doing in the Steam Machines front.
  • DAOWAce - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    Meanwhile, just having GFE installed breaks NVIDIA Inspector's profile exporting.

    I have dozens of profiles customized and saved, which I need to reload after a driver installation because it resets a bunch of the settings in them. And then with GFE installed, it resets a ton more, not to mention silently changing things behind the scenes. This means in order to export my profiles so I can load them after a driver update, I have to uninstall GFE. After finding this out, I opted to uninstall it entirely (of which it was only installed for a week after all these years to see the behind-the-scenes profile updates it had).

    This is completely asinine. No driver should ever be available solely through a horridly bloated program that requires internet connectivity.
  • mobutu - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    So let's see, right now, a simple nvidia geforce driver contains the following (thank god for now I can choose the components I want):
    -graphics driver
    -hd audio driver
    -physyx
    -3dvision
    -3dstero something like that.
    etc

    Obviously I install only the graphics driver because I have no need for the other components.

    Now (in the future), nvidia wants my email address so i can get my graphics driver (THE only thing I want!) and in addition to all of the above they'll give me more crap like streaming (lol), gfexperience, shadowplay, co-op, sharing, broadcast etc , all useless for me.
    And on top of all these, the corresponding (windows) services and start-up apps for this crap will hog my system.

    I'm ok as long this shovelware will be optional.
    But ofcourse, the masses being dumb, this will end down in our throats mandatory for all sometime in the future.
    Sad.
  • DParadoxx - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    GFE is bloatware an I won't be installing it. This is yet another reason I'm looking at moving back to AMD.
  • D. Lister - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    Ah yes, moving back to AMD, with their lovely "Gaming Evolved by Raptr" nonsense, which facilitates the selling of your personal information to the highest bidder, on top of being worse in every bloody way to the GFE. Well done.
  • Azurael - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    AMD Gaming Evolved isn't installed on my system, I've never registered with AMD and I can still get regular driver updates. What are you on about?
  • eddman - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    I don't get it. What's so hard about posting drivers on their websites?

    I have no problem with them, offering drivers through GFE, but what's the reason for canning exe drivers?

    They really need to explain this one.
  • Spectrophobic - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link

    I'm astounded how many people consider GFE bloatware considering AMD's Gaming Evolved is much much worse. From my time with GFE, I think it's more polished than even the CCC (I know different purposes, etc).
  • hero4hire - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    It is bloatware. At best shovelware. Just because AMD does something worse is not relevent to the discussion. We should be opinionating about how we want software to act and not race to the bottom. I don't know if AMD is worse/ better or if Intel drivers solve world hunger. Let's focus on the matter at hand.

    I would love GFE as a default action. What I detest is the removal of the power user option. Let the masses have drivers pushed. No really, hood. But why can't you release the driver executables in a beta for in the manner that already works? And the reason I fear as the most likely is to data mine and vendor lock me in. And that pisses me off!
  • colonelclaw - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    Seems to be a lot of hate for GFE here, so I will come to it's defense; I'm a big fan of the game optimisation part. On every game I've tested with it so far, it's provided me with 60fps and maximum eye candy possible without having to spend hours turning things on and off to see what difference it makes. I realise some people may enjoy this kind of trial-and-error troubleshooting, but it's not what I buy games for.
  • Fiernaq - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    Screw GFE. I don't need any of that bloat... err... "features".
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    I've been unfortunately stuck using a desktop PC recently and it has a GeForce GT 730 in it, which is an okay graphics card, but it's not exactly a gaming monster. Since I play PC games only occasionally, the lower end performance isn't exactly a problem, but I did recently just accept the default settings for the driver install and got the whole GeForce Experience suite. The desktop is rarely connected to the internet since it hasn't got wireless and only once in a while do I take it over to my router to connect it for things like OS updates and whatnot. It was last weekend that I most recently did this and GeForce Experience software (something I've mostly been ignoring since I did the default driver install) fetched a new driver, asked to scan my computer (which took forever, but that might be the fault of my old 750GB hard drive being slow), and then recommended a bunch of settings changes to Fallout 3 that seemed sort of silly since it was running just fine the way I'd configured it. It offers a bunch of capabilities I don't need or would be willing to use, like live streaming since those things require getting in bed with Google and letting them have access to even more of my life than just tracking me through advertisements. It also failed to identify any game I installed via Steam, only finding Fallout 3 which is an ancient GOTY DVD-based install. I just don't see a point in it or letting it run continuously on my system, but I didn't really care overly much either way until the comments here pointed out that it's an optional component of the driver install. I think the next time I load a new GPU driver, I'll do so manually and go about removing the GeForce Experience.
  • SuckItAnand - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    Go ahead and uninstall the experience. Everybody, right away. Nvidia will soon reverse their stance.
    The reason they are really doing this is to get statistics on piracy. The GFE scans your computer looking for games and whatever else it seems fit, and reports this info back to Nvidia, as Nvidia are working closer with developers these days, they are in a good position to get information on pirate users habits, and possibly implement some sort of DRM in future, or even a way of tracking copyright infringers for sending nasty legal letters to.
    GFE can be loaded with definitions of piracy workaround files, this and a database of registered users, cross-refferenced with digital distribution shops and their lists of bank account and therefore address holding customers, gives them a very tidy way of tracking people down.
  • SuckItAnand - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    And a bit of background into teh different aspects of nvidia DRM:
    http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/04/24/191423...

    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am...

    https://semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8...

    search google for plenty more.
  • hero4hire - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    >The GFE scans your computer looking for games and whatever else it seems fit, and reports this info back to Nvidia

    I would be very curious to see this tested. FUD or not? Could anandtech look into this more? I'm on a Google mission now...skeptical but plausable
  • SuckItAnand - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link

    Anand removed my valid comment, tehy probably dont like my name, which is the reason I tell you to suck it, cos you act like this.
  • Michael Bay - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link

    I kind of understand their drive to build a nV ecosystem, but drivers?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now