Did nVidia follow through with forcing people to register to use their drivers?

[michalrz]

Most companies are becoming openly hostile.

That said, there was ALWAYS the "custom install" option in almost all software, and it was also up to us the users to actually download the required software from the actual home page of a given piece of software (instead of going to some shady stupid hub that provides a "downloader" stub).
In the case of Nvidia, I never installed that experience thing and wasn't prompted for anything. With all driver and runtime libraries, I begin with 'minimal' and work my way up in case something doesn't work.

Things are getting worse by the year, yes, but as long as you're conscious with what you are doing - you can avoid some of the idiocracy. In a year or two? Who knows. For now, we have alternatives like Linux, that are often clunky and frustrating, but mostly due to incompetence and not due to warfare between us (end users) and John Smith the theoretical developer of library X that opens file format Y.

I'd like to also express my gratitude to usa_all_the_way for that Elvira pic. I missed that one.

 

[jordan12]

I don't even use the official drivers. A lot of us use scene drivers that just install the driver and no other bs. With, all the good and tasty tweaks applied. So, yeah ............

Where do you get these?

 

[The Cobra]

Alright, I just wondered. I'm getting a new card and AMD is taking too long with Vega so I'm going green for awhile. If they would have done that forced registration thing I would get a 580, but I'll get a 1060 I reckon.

Thanks

"Taking to long with Vega..."
I am lost, can you please explain? Thank you.

 

[Armenius]

Good to know.

It was pre-installed on this box (1st box I bought vs built in 25 years - Celeron 300a was my 1st build in 1998)

I bought this during covid because the whole box was only $600 more than buying a standalone RTX-3070.

Anyhoo... uninstalled GFE.

I used it a few times in 3-4 games that would not display FPS in steam or epic & for a few screenshots...

My point was just - WHY does a MFG need my personal info to use their !@#$%^%^ hardware?

Even if you use GFE, they are just asking for your e-mail address. You don't need to disclose any personal information at all to create a NVIDIA account.

 

[Okatis]

Even if you use GFE, they are just asking for your e-mail address. You don't need to disclose any personal information at all to create a NVIDIA account.

Tbh with the way data brokering is it's hard to fault people for being skeptical/precautionary with providing seemingly unnecessary data, as additional user information is often obtained from other sources.

I haven't read language explicitly to that effect in Nvidia's privacy policy but some I've read include sections about aggregating extra information about users from third-party sources (separate from sections about data handling by third-party payment services).