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Nvidia's New GeForce Experience 3.0 Requires Mandatory Registration (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: With the newly released GeForce Experience 3.0 software, Nvidia might irk some users. While you will still be able to download the drivers from their web site sans registration, You will now be required to register in order to use the GeForce Experience software While the Experience software does add some powerful streaming features for games and is "three times faster and consumes 50 percent less memory than the old GeForce Experience," it might seem like a bit of overkill for those users that only used the software to keep their drivers up to date.
Information technology is good at eroding your consumer surplus. This is only the beginning.
I remember some people having issue with a particular release driver. I didn't notice anything wrong with it myself, but used an interim beta driver, as per nVidia's instructions, until they made another release version. Otherwise, I've personally had no problems with nVidia's drivers. A lot of the driver updates seem to just add optimized code-paths for the latest big games, so there's often no reason to upgrade.
Who ordered that?
Just because you haven't had an issue, doesn't mean others have had the same experience.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
nVidia and AMD both have bad software. It's just that with nVidia it's optional, and with AMD it's the drivers.
*ducks*
Hey Marketing and Execs,
You're not going to get any useful data out of things like this. Those people you've decided to ignore? The ones who brought up the statistics which made your eyes glaze over and your money-boner wilt? Well, they're correct. There's nothing new to be discovered in terms of trends or about the people purchasing your products. All the data you need about those people has already been captured at the point of sale. In fact, all you really need to know is the fact that you sold another one of your products. Forcing them to register a piece of spyware, and we really need to be honest that is what this is, isn't going to do anything but hurt you in the long term.
Now, you may be of the mindset that you're going to be out in another job in the next business cycle. That's fine, but just know that future employers are going to looking closer and closer at your results. If all you can show them is a net loss of Good Will (I'm talking about the accounting term here, not the general sentiment the purchasing public has towards your products, although that does play a factor in determining the value of said term) they're going to be much less inclined to hire you. So it's really in your own best interests if you take that step back, look at the larger picture of what's going on, and ask yourself if this is wisest decision you could be making on behalf of the brand and company that you're working for.
When it first came out I tried it and after discovering it's a complete waste of resources, I uninstalled it. For years now I have deliberately unchecked it during installation of NVidia drivers. I also turn off the system tray icon. I feel that drivers must just do their job quietly in the background without ever bothering me. For those twice a year occasions when I need to tweak something, it's a 1.5 seconds away in a start menu search. I definitely prefer NVidia's low key control panel on my home machine over the flashy horrific mess that AMD puts on my work laptop.
The only vaguely useful feature GeForce Experience provided was ShadowPlay, NVIIDA's own screen capture video recorder. However, there are plenty of third-party offerings that accomplish the same thing. I could create a fake ephemeral email address or hack the registry to make it work, but frankly the features it provides do not merit the effort. I have since uninstalled GeForce Experience 3.0, leaving just the drivers.
Now that they've (unnecessarily and gratuitously) made the cloud login mandatory, I would also be interested to see some security researchers dig in to GFE3 to see how well NVIDIA is protecting people's login credentials...
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I use 'the geforce experience', and my experience is crap.
Hit the upgrade button and the app appears to hang. No progress, no nothing. But it does seem to be downloading - I guess - since it snaps out of it sometime later.
All in all, I would absolutely not recommend it.
Feels the same. A new driver introduced periodic stuttering in games and somehow destabilized the installer environment enough to make uninstalling the driver impossible. Had to reinstall Windows and have decided to just leave the original driver that works in place.
...unless you wanna actually do anything stably, especially under Linux.
Awesome, if I'd had this option earlier, I could've avoided installing this piece of shit that scans every single file on your computer at startup!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's optional software. Dont installed it if you dont want it.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.