Thursday, October 15th 2015
NVIDIA Prepares a Controversial Change to its Driver Update Distribution
NVIDIA is preparing a major change to the way it distributes driver updates. You now get new versions of NVIDIA GeForce drivers by either downloading them from the company's websites (NVIDIA.com and GeForce.com), or use GeForce Experience to download and install (update) them for you. NVIDIA plans to change this such, that the latest driver updates will be only available through GeForce Experience, while standalone installers that are downloadable from the website will slow down to a quarterly update cadence.
NVIDIA is currently rolling out new drivers on a monthly basis, sometimes even twice a month, predating major AAA game releases, under its "Game Ready Driver" moniker. If you want the latest drivers to keep up with new game releases, then NVIDIA expects you to use GeForce Experience to update your drivers. Those without Internet connections or building offline (eg: system integrators, first-time installations), will have to use stale drivers from the website (which will be on a slower update cycle), and then update them to the latest using GeForce Experience. NVIDIA's justification for this move is that it finds that 90% of the driver updates are going through GeForce Experience. The part that's controversial about this is that it makes GeForce Experience an app gamers can't do without (and will probably stay loyal to the NVIDIA brand). This change will take effect this December.
Source:
AnandTech
NVIDIA is currently rolling out new drivers on a monthly basis, sometimes even twice a month, predating major AAA game releases, under its "Game Ready Driver" moniker. If you want the latest drivers to keep up with new game releases, then NVIDIA expects you to use GeForce Experience to update your drivers. Those without Internet connections or building offline (eg: system integrators, first-time installations), will have to use stale drivers from the website (which will be on a slower update cycle), and then update them to the latest using GeForce Experience. NVIDIA's justification for this move is that it finds that 90% of the driver updates are going through GeForce Experience. The part that's controversial about this is that it makes GeForce Experience an app gamers can't do without (and will probably stay loyal to the NVIDIA brand). This change will take effect this December.
173 Comments on NVIDIA Prepares a Controversial Change to its Driver Update Distribution
As an aside W10 still forcing updates?
An assumption from the text (once/month, twice/month) is that nVidia wants to make their updates lighter. Plenty of time only the core driver updates, but other items are still the same. No need for a full package if only a portion is new.
FAIL
When you gonna fight against Steam automatic updates? lol
www.ebay.com/itm/381433334938?rmvSB=true
Does not ship to Greece
I really really REALLY thinking about it.
I also don't see the app useful. I don't want it fiddling with my graphic settings of games. I run all of them at max possible settings, I don't want it "optimizing" stuff and making it worse. So, there is no real value from it for me.
EDIT:
I'd love to see incrimental driver updating like antiviruses are doing for decades (small updates of only file sthat actually changed) with simple control panel to rollback to old driver or even option to rollback to any other previous version. That would be so cool.
This way they could save tons of bandwidth, deliver updates to users in matter of minutes and give them instant option to rollback to old version if something doesn't work ok. It's how driver updating and game profiles should be done in freaking 2015.