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Does GeForce Experience work in terms of optimizing games?

Haunted

Member
It's equivalent to the built-in "autodetect" feature in other games. Usually pretty unreliable and on the conservative side, but your best option if you don't want to go into the menus yourself.

You lazy bum.

If you don't like to mess with the options menu, yep it works.
Basically.
 

Addnan

Member
Works pretty well with most games from what I tried, but I would rather just tinker myself and get it perfect.
 

Xyber

Member
It has worked just fine the few times I've tried it and it did set the settings to where I got 60fps for the most part.
 

RK9039

Member
Not really, it just changes the options for you. You can do all of that yourself in the game. I do use it from time to time, just to see what it considers 'optimized'.
 

The Goat

Member
I prefer to tweak myself. You can use it as a base, and tweak from there. Half the fun of PC gaming is tweaking values in a text editor :)
 
Sometimes it makes some odd decisions (especially initially), but it usually picks some pretty decent options. If nothing else, they're a good starting point for further tweaking.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
Not in my experience, especially if you tweak your own hardware (overclocking cpu/gpu/RAM, unlocking cores etc...)

Not a fan.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
Has anyone used it to "optimize" games? Does it actually work or what?

As someone who uses nvidia inspector and went through fresh install yes it does a lot to making games perform better than default settings.

The Goat I love tweaking in notepad myself but regedit and a little bit of adventurism go a long way.
 

Xyphie

Member
I find it pretty useless, it only really lets you change stuff in the menus from what I've seen in the games I have installed. Would be useful if they included undocumented settings in .ini files etc without having to do a bunch of googling.

It also almost always recommends fullscreen (which I dispise) over fullscreen windowed mode, ugh.
 

Blackthorn

"hello?" "this is vagina"
Useless for me, and I suspect most people on Gaf, but I recommend it to any friend of mine who finds PC settings typically intimidating/confusing and the response has been very positive.

Smart program. Nvidia's doing great stuff with their software these days.
 

TommyT

Member
I have this on my laptop with the Optimus tech... I should probably try it.

I prefer to tweak myself. You can use it as a base, and tweak from there. Half the fun of PC gaming is tweaking values in a text editor :)

Not for everyone, no. A one-click solution to optimize performance is quite nice. Whether it actually gets it right is a different story.
 

theRizzle

Member
I find it pretty useless, it only really lets you change stuff in the menus from what I've seen in the games I have installed. Would be useful if they included undocumented settings in .ini files etc without having to do a bunch of googling.

It also almost always recommends fullscreen (which I dispise) over fullscreen windowed mode, ugh.

I think for some games it does.

I can't think of the game off the top of my head but I am positive I changed every option in-game to High but when I checked the GeForce Experience there were quite a few options that I didn't see in the menus.
 

Dylan

Member
I still don't really understand how the Nvidia control panel works.

Specifically this screen:

8a908e2b_vbattach103736.jpeg


First off, I don't get why there isn't a "let the 3D application decide" option for every single setting here. I don't understand what all the texture filtering options mean, but why wouldn't you want the card to use everything it can do?

When I restore my 640m to defaults using this screen it turns a lot of stuff off, which I totally don't understand; if the card can do it why wouldn't I want it on? And if it hinders performance then why does it do something poorly?

Obviously I'm not an expert on GPU's but it seems needlessly complicated.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
First off, I don't get why there isn't a "let the 3D application decide" option for every single setting here. I don't understand what all the texture filtering options mean, but why wouldn't you want the card to use everything it can do?

When I restore my 640m to defaults using this screen it turns a lot of stuff off, which I totally don't understand; if the card can do it why wouldn't I want it on? And if it hinders performance then why does it do something poorly?

Obviously I'm not an expert on GPU's but it seems needlessly complicated.

Sometimes bad settings break compatibility with games especially if you start messing with aa, af, and lod bias.

People also use lower settings for fps gains, typically average or minimum gains not just the peak. I play a lot of titles fast competitive titles at 120fps and it needs to stay there or very close to it.

Trades off in performance or iq can be a pain in a neck or a blessing in disguise.
 

Dylan

Member
Sometimes bad settings break compatibility with games especially if you start messing with aa, af, and lod bias.

People also use lower settings for fps gains, typically average or minimum gains not just the peak. I play a lot of titles fast competitive titles at 120fps and it needs to stay there or very close to it.

Trades off in performance or iq can be a pain in a neck or a blessing in disguise.

Yeah, I get the general idea of reduce quality = better performance, however I'm never sure if I change settings in-game, if it will override the global settings if I have them turned off in the above menu.

To make things more confusing, this screen:


has a clear "let the 3D application decide" option, but it isn't clear whether this option overrides the above menu.

Basically I'm trying to figure what is the "master setting" that I should be worrying about? There doesn't seem to be any hierarchy to these menus so I can't figure out which setting the card will actually obey.
 
Looking at the settings it wants to offer me for B Infinite, I don't know... A lot of them are at the highest, but my notebook sure aint't cut out for that lol. With my current settings I got like 30-40fps. Not sure about this one...

but trying out wouldn't hurt I guess.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
Yeah, I get the general idea of reduce quality = better performance, however I'm never sure if I change settings in-game, if it will override the global settings if I have them turned off in the above menu.

To make things more confusing, this screen:



has a clear "let the 3D application decide" option, but it isn't clear whether this option overrides the above menu.

Basically I'm trying to figure what is the "master setting" that I should be worrying about? There doesn't seem to be any hierarchy to these menus so I can't figure out which setting the card will actually obey.

Only way to know is to test. My experience is limited with the Geforce experience it was just a nice touch. I noticed as I had to recent reinstall and it saved me sometime in dealing with my crysis 2&3 setting or correcting source games settings that never are right for me until I change them.

I still tweak like mofo and suggest most gamers do or give it a try when they run in to problems or aren't seeing performance they know should be there.

Nvidia Inspector is better you see far more options and making profiles is lot easier than the convulted nvidia cpanel. Guru3d is good place to see guides on tweaking cards, drivers or games.
 

Dylan

Member
Only way to know is to test. My experience is limited with the Geforce experience it was just a nice touch. I noticed as I had to recent reinstall and it saved me sometime in dealing with my crysis 2&3 setting or correcting source games settings that never are right for me until I change them.

I still tweak like mofo and suggest most gamers do or give it a try when they run in to problems or aren't seeing performance they know should be there.

Nvidia Inspector is better you see far more options and making profiles is lot easier than the convulted nvidia cpanel. Guru3d is good place to see guides on tweaking cards, drivers or games.

I end up having to tweak everything individually, but I really don't enjoy it, especially when I just bought a new game and want to play it.

My problem is that I'm just savvy enough to know when things aren't right, but nowhere near savvy enough to make educated guesses about what I should be changing. The number of options available in Nvidia Inspector or, for example, The Witcher 2's graphics settings screen is so overwhelming that I get discouraged easily.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
I end up having to tweak everything individually, but I really don't enjoy it, especially when I just bought a new game and want to play it.

My problem is that I'm just savvy enough to know when things aren't right, but nowhere near savvy enough to make educated guesses about what I should be changing. The number of options available in Nvidia Inspector or, for example, The Witcher 2's graphics settings screen is so overwhelming that I get discouraged easily.

I tend to tweak after playing through a game for a few hours just to see it at default performance. My main reason for using something like inspector is certain things like dynamic tiling, vsync options, ssao quality or aa quality are things you can't really do as much with that menu.

Most things have an explanation especially when you use nvidia inspector to get better AA. Some settings you will never need to touch either in nvidia inspector like deep color for 3d applications or export performance counters.

I can see why you're discouraged but I'd be more discouraged if I bought any gpu over 200$ and was only left with the stuff in cpanel or in the case of some games really bad in game options with no console. Games can ignore settings so that's another reason I use the program in mention.
 

antitrop

Member
GeForce Experience just maxes everything out for me on most games because I have a GTX 590.

The GTX 590 isn't as good as Nvidia thinks it is, I guess, I usually have to fuck with a few settings to maintain 60fps in most games.
 
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