Non-Bloated Driver Performance vs Bloatware included (GeForce Experience)

[Mystique]

I have a trusty old 1080 Ti AIO Hybrid from way back that's surviving me through until hopefully a 3080Ti, which was doing just fine then after a few driver updates, it started having stuttering issues, frame drop, and other things. Some games, were worse than others; I primarily play Blizzard games and Overwatch & HOTS would lag suddenly and I didn't know why. Primarily, during the first 2-3 minutes of the game, the lag was the worst. We're talking 60+fps drops.

Seeing that my card was running <52c in CP2077, I decided my card was in perfect working order, and nothing else has changed. So then I started thinking they must've messed something up, or maybe even Windows 10 combined with NVidia did. Going back and forth to different drivers didn't do much to help. Maybe I didn't go far back enough, but to hell with that kind of solution, if you can call it one anyways.

Then I decided to go nuclear with any type of telemetry altogether. I rebuffed my W10 against Telemetry, then I installed NVCleanInstall_1.8.0, and I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (cleanly) with this tool. I only allowed PhysX and HDMI Audio, disabling all the other bloatware.

Now my FPS is constantly at 120 (my refresh rate) and I get zero stutter, and seemingly lots of other issues have gone away. Every game runs smoother. It's been a few days, and I just thought I'd share my results.

I don't know what Nvidia did to their drivers, and I don't want to speculate at the BS they are tracking, but I am never using GeForce Experience again.

 

[criccio]

You probably wiped out the shader cache in the process and that fixed the problem.

 

[Mystique]

You probably wiped out the shader cache in the process and that fixed the problem.

Definitely possible - installing with the clean option might've done the trick and I'm equating the success to something else. I didn't realize that a shader cache would cause those types of issues though, so that's definitely good to know.

When you do an organic "Clean Install" from Nvidia driver installation, I assume that's what wipes the shader cache? It doesn't do it unless it's clean?

Also, what I find the most interesting is that alt-tabbing doesnt black out some of my games anymore. I wonder if their in-game-hud has issues too.

 

[Krenum]

I never use Geforce Experience or any other bloatware they have in their drivers. Its useless. I always tick the "Clean install" box too, when upgrading drivers.

 

[criccio]

I never use Geforce Experience or any other bloatware they have in their drivers. Its useless. I always tick the "Clean install" box too, when upgrading drivers.

Subjective. I make heavy use of the streamlined key combos to save clips for quick and easy sharing.

 

[Armenius]

I have a trusty old 1080 Ti AIO Hybrid from way back that's surviving me through until hopefully a 3080Ti, which was doing just fine then after a few driver updates, it started having stuttering issues, frame drop, and other things. Some games, were worse than others; I primarily play Blizzard games and Overwatch & HOTS would lag suddenly and I didn't know why. Primarily, during the first 2-3 minutes of the game, the lag was the worst. We're talking 60+fps drops.

Seeing that my card was running <52c in CP2077, I decided my card was in perfect working order, and nothing else has changed. So then I started thinking they must've messed something up, or maybe even Windows 10 combined with NVidia did. Going back and forth to different drivers didn't do much to help. Maybe I didn't go far back enough, but to hell with that kind of solution, if you can call it one anyways.

Then I decided to go nuclear with any type of telemetry altogether. I rebuffed my W10 against Telemetry, then I installed NVCleanInstall_1.8.0, and I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (cleanly) with this tool. I only allowed PhysX and HDMI Audio, disabling all the other bloatware.

Now my FPS is constantly at 120 (my refresh rate) and I get zero stutter, and seemingly lots of other issues have gone away. Every game runs smoother. It's been a few days, and I just thought I'd share my results.

I don't know what Nvidia did to their drivers, and I don't want to speculate at the BS they are tracking, but I am never using GeForce Experience again.

You do realize that you have the option of not installing GeForce Experience every time you install the drivers, yes? Even if it was already installed previously, deselecting GFE at the start will cause it to be uninstalled with the current installation. A custom installation will also give you the option of what parts of the driver you want to install.

Your performance issue most likely stemmed from you not disabling Shadowplay, Game Streaming, and/or Freestyle that are enabled by default in GFE. If you disabled those features GFE will just sit idle doing absolutely nothing in the background. If you do not want to use any of those features anyway then you shouldn't have been installing GFE to begin with.

Sounds like a classic PEBKAC issue.

 

[Mystique]

What sounds like a PEBKAC issue? GeForce experience installing or me getting massive frame drops for no reason because I updated my nvidia drivers without clean installing every single time? Did you read the part where "It was doing just fine... then something" happened? The stuff you included in what you estimate my PEBKAC issue is, were enabled before and after the problem so it's probably not that; and if they messed one of those features up, that's also not exactly my problem.

Don't be ridiculous and insulting, I was just trying to help anyone in the same boat.

I still don't know why my FPS went to shit, I just have multiple versions of speculation in this thread, so give me a break. If it doesn't help you, fine, that's ok, really glad you don't have issues, but a clean bloat-free install fixed my issue. Maybe just a clean install would've too, or maybe an install without NVExperience alone, but I won't know until the next time. Whatever happened to me was an Nvidia issue at any rate. You shouldn't need to tweak anything to not get pisspoor performance in 10 year old games (and I didn't before..), only tweak to get the most of it.

 

[euskalzabe]

Whatever happened to me was an Nvidia issue at any rate.

I'll admit I've been on a similar situation in the past, where my performance would suddenly be lower and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually I realized that I had installed GFE a few times in different driver updates (you forget to uncheck GFE, and once it's installed, oh well, not gonna do it again just for that...). It was a while until I connected that it was every time that GFE was installed that my system wasn't performing as usual. Now I always make sure that I install the driver without GFE - it's inconvenient to have to look for driver updates manually, but the performance upside is certainly worth it. I think many people are not aware that GFE definitely puts an unnecessary load on the system. I avoid it like the plague.

Tangential note - is Nvidia ever going to update their Control Panel? Because, if I remember correctly, it's the same that was available on Windows XP days. I mean this thing looks dated AF. Even if they don't change functionality, give it a simple visual makeover, just that would take an engineer, what... a weekend? I mean, the atrocious use of space is real. So much wasted area:

 

[criccio]

As a GFE proponent who makes use of it and have since it was released i'm having a hard to justifying to myself that its causes all these performance issues that it seems to be saddled with in this thread.

 

[Armenius]

What sounds like a PEBKAC issue? GeForce experience installing or me getting massive frame drops for no reason because I updated my nvidia drivers without clean installing every single time? Did you read the part where "It was doing just fine... then something" happened? The stuff you included in what you estimate my PEBKAC issue is, were enabled before and after the problem so it's probably not that; and if they messed one of those features up, that's also not exactly my problem.

Don't be ridiculous and insulting, I was just trying to help anyone in the same boat.

I still don't know why my FPS went to shit, I just have multiple versions of speculation in this thread, so give me a break. If it doesn't help you, fine, that's ok, really glad you don't have issues, but a clean bloat-free install fixed my issue. Maybe just a clean install would've too, or maybe an install without NVExperience alone, but I won't know until the next time. Whatever happened to me was an Nvidia issue at any rate. You shouldn't need to tweak anything to not get pisspoor performance in 10 year old games (and I didn't before..), only tweak to get the most of it.

You get this option at the start of every driver installation. If GFE is always getting installed then it's because the user isn't selecting the correct option. As I said in my post, even if GFE is already installed selecting this option on a new installation will uninstall the current installation of GFE.

 

[Rizen]

Personally, I have never had an issue with GFE. I don't even notice it's there. ShadowPlay is pretty convenient as well. I get that people don't like bloatware and if you're not using the features it probably feels unnecessary, but I don't think it's solely responsible for performance degradation either.