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GFE2

Over the by few years, Nvidia has fabricated a number of changes and improvements to its GeForce GPU companion software, GeForce Experience. If you own an Nvidia graphics card, GFE governs the use of a number of features, including in-game video recording, Shield streaming, Battery Boost, and game optimizations. The company is making several new changes to the application today, and announcing a major modify to how it distributes commuter updates that could have far-reaching implications.

First, the updates. Starting immediately, Nvidia'southward GameStream engineering science will allow users to stream titles in 4K at 60 FPS, with support for 5.ane audio, if your hardware tin can handle that output level in the first place. But high-finish Maxwell cards have the updated NVENC encoding unit that'south required for 4K back up, and just a handful of those cards can push button 4K in 60 FPS — basically the Titan Ten and GTX 980 Ti. We expect Pascal GPUs to support such capabilities across more than of Nvidia's GPU stack.

GFE-4K

Yous'll demand a Shield Television set to receive a 4K stream from a local PC, and Nvidia recommends a wired connection for best performance. Presumably, Nvidia has moved to H.265, since both high-terminate Maxwell cards and Shield Television support it, merely we don't have official confirmation of that however.

The other new characteristic introduced today is the power to circulate to YouTube Alive, the streaming giant's new service meant to compete with Twitch. GeForce Experience can manage both logins and stream to either service.

Future "Game-Ready" drivers volition crave registration

Past far the biggest announcement today is a fundamental modify to how Nvidia distributes its driver updates. I of the differences betwixt Teams Ruby and Green is that Nvidia has frequently been faster off the block when it comes to Day one back up for features like SLI. While DirectX 12 is expected to help level this deviation, since it moves support for multi-GPU configurations to the developer (and allows for fewer commuter-side optimizations in general), early commuter support for DX11 remains of import. Up until now, those game-fix drivers accept been available to anyone with a GeForce card. Going forrad, that'due south going to change.

GameReadyDriver

In the future, only GeForce owners who both install GeForce Experience and register the service by providing Nvidia with an email address will have access to Game-Ready commuter downloads, which volition be pushed exclusively through GFE. That doesn't mean y'all won't be able to download a driver from Nvidia.com — information technology just means that the drivers on the website will be updated periodically, non on a per-release basis. Nvidia has stated that information technology will push a new driver through its website at least once a quarter, but information technology hasn't ironed out the exact timing details yet.

Nvidia was quick to reassure u.s.a. that users could choose to stop providing an email address to GeForce Experience and opt-out of the program, but noted that you'll lose access to Game-Ready drivers if you practice. Every bit a reviewer, I agree that the brunt of providing the visitor with an email accost is minimal and GeForce Feel is a well-behaved, useful utility. The only thing I dislike nearly it is that y'all have to have it installed in order to use Nvidia's Shield controller with a PC, fifty-fifty if you're connecting with a USB cablevision. Asinine every bit that is, it impacts a small number of people.

As a journalist with deep concerns over user privacy, nevertheless, I hate this trend of vacuuming upwards user information. When you buy a CPU or GPU, y'all're paying several hundred dollars for the production and for a reasonable expectation of support. Locking commuter updates behind an email address is a very small barrier, but it'due south still a bulwark that requires you lot to provide Nvidia with ostensibly personal information.

I'd feel better about the situation if Nvidia released more than information on this plan and promised (without weasel words) that email addresses would non exist sold, shared, or combined with information purchased from companies like Axciom to create client histories for marketing purposes. Since no company offers promises similar this, if y'all care almost privacy, I'd recommend registering a burner email account if you eventually sign up for GFE.

I don't want to sound like I'g accusing Nvidia of annihilation untoward — there's no evidence the company is planning to practice anything to compromise user privacy, and Nvidia's business model doesn't rely on gathering and selling data about its users. In an era where we at present see companies dropping even the pretense of anonymizing user data, notwithstanding, I've become increasingly wary of all moves that would require customers to hand over anything — specially when the feature being locked behind such manus-overs has been historically bachelor without them.