For a year and so now, GeForce Experience has been around and seems to do a decent job optimizing game settings and a great job notifying the user when a beta or certified driver goes live.

Before Experience came out, I would manually erase my old driver, run DriverCleaner Pro (if I remember the name correctly) and install the new driver. It was such a process, though not a complex one, when compared to GeForce Experience's few clicks that makes updating the driver painless and fast. However, I wonder how thorough of a job Experience does with cleaning out the old driver… The few times I did a web search for seeing which process is best, or if there are any bad side effects from installing through Experience, didn't bring up anything.

Is Experience the way to go or is it too good to be true? It seems to work great for me.

I feel like nvidia's engineers are far smarter than me, so I assume that if I do the intuitive thing and just hit the "install next update!" button that keeps on popping up every few weeks it'll clean the old drivers properly.

That and I feel Brad said on one of the bombcasts that you don't really need to uninstall the old video drivers anymore and hey I trust that guy

I've used it for more than a year and I have no complaints. Haven't heard any complaints around the interwebs either. It's really been great. I don't stick to their recommended settings for my games but it's usually in the ballpark.

GeForce Experience works fine, I never do any GPU driver stuff manually anymore. It lets me know when there is an update, I click Express Install, and it's done.

Never not GeForce Experience now

GeForce Experience has worked fantastically for me everytime

@mb said:

Yep, this is pretty much how I do things now. Something to be mindful of is that using Express Install will keep old installers around so you can rollback in case something goes wrong. This can eat up a significant amount of space over time, so it's worth doing a clean install every now and again to reclaim that space. It's kind annoying that there isn't an option to wipe old driver data while keeping any custom Control Panel settings, but that's not a massive deal.

I just hit install every few month when it asks.

Here is a funny thing. I was using a crappy $120 720p HDTV for my monitor on the 'class build' I was inkering with a few weeks ago. The stock "generic" Windows 7.1 driver outputted better video using my GTX 750 ti than the NVIDA driver did.

As I was installing the OS, I said, "Oh wow this crappy TV looks pretty damn awesome!" It looked great through all the other driver installs....until I put in the Nvida driver disc. Then bamm it looked like crap; and THAT made me chuckle. It was the just the driver in the box on the disc, so who knows, the driver update will look better - but it did make me laugh.

I've only been an NVIDIA user for just under a year (I have a 780) so Experience is all I know. It seems pretty great to me. That said, I've had issues with the driver installation 'not responding' from time to time. It's apparently a known issue that's harmless as the install is already complete by that point. I could kill it with task manager, no harm done.

That said, I haven't seen that issue crop up for a few months now, so it would appear to be resolved. Even with that occasional hiccup, it's still way superior to AMDs catalyst bullshit. With their rubbish driver install process and untold number of niggling issues with a huge number of games, it's safe to say I'll never buy one of their cards again.

I'm downloading this GeForce Experience based off of the glowing reviews here, thanks all.

Mmmm yes, quite impressed. Is this a similiar program that allows me to update audio drivers as easily as GE?

The standalone installers for Nvidia drivers have had a 'clean install' button for a while now which I use most of the time, or before a big release. For some reason I don't want GeForce Experience installed. Just feels like junk taking up resources... I don't know. I check Tweakguides every day and see when the drivers come out.

I feel extremely comfortable around computers and I think Geforce Experience is great for telling me when to update my drivers (even if everything else it does is mostly pointless).

I can't help but say this but I find it weird that you did all that stuff you said when updating your drivers before. That... there is very few cases where that is (was) ever necessary and Nvidia has had it's own clean driver install for almost 10 years now. Much much longer than Experience has existed. I mean, it's fine if you do that stuff, but that was never necessary for you to do.

Feel free to ignore me, though. I just can't help saying something about that. It's very strange you did that- to me.

@flstyle: I haven't had to update sound card drivers for years. What sound card do you use? It's unlikely they release drivers often, let alone have a program for it, but it wouldn't be hard for me to find out.

Works fine for me. Never had a problem.

very carefully

naw, but seriously, i sometimes have issues with Geforce Experience (takes too long to download the drivers and i got Shit To Do) and often just get the drivers from geforce.com. never had any issues, never had to uninstall old drivers. everything Just Works.

Just used Experience to install 344.75 and it seems to work just fine, lets you do a clean install and all that.

Might use it in the future since it also looks up beta drivers.

Yeah I used to do the same TC but in the last two years since my Titan and then 780 I've just let NV do it for me. I still control when it happens since I have a Catleap and my TV OC'd as well as a hacked 3D vision on my Tv that isn't supposed to supported. But yeah Geforce Experience has been solid and has given me zero issues.

If/When I switch to AMD for bang for buck I'll do a full manual/drivercleaner since I always get problems when goring from NV to AMD if I don't fully clean NV's stuff. They like to leave "gifts" for AMD during the uninstallation which doesn't happen when I go from AMD to NV.

I respond to the new driver alert, and it usually works. But boy did I have some trouble with the latest driver. Seems to be okay now with several re-installs. I really wanted to go back to the previous driver.

Experience has been ticking me of lately. There's been three updates in the past week or something. They're not small either. Crap takes time.

I just starting using the Geforce Experience thing and it seems fine.

I can't use the Gefore Experience application. Whenever I try to download a driver through it, it says "Check Your Internet Connection." I know my connection is fine. I've tried uninstalling the application and re-installing it, and that doesn't fix anything.

Nvidia Experience all the way. Just so much easier.

I do recommend deleting manually the older nvidia drivers from your harddrive. As installing the newer driver doesnt automatically delete the old drivers.

Here is a link to an article that tells you which files you can delete from your harddrive safely:

http://www.gameplayinside.com/optimize/cleaning-up-old-nvidia-driver-files-to-save-disk-space/

In some cases you can potentially free up gigabytes of harddrive space. Especially valuable if one is talking about ssd drives.

I may look into this because I have a 128gb SSD and it's been filling up over the years with who-knows-what (I have a separate drive for games, music, etc.) and I could use the free space. Thanks for the suggestion!

Overall, though, I relieved to hear that the majority of Experience users are having no problems.

I just throw my whole PC out and order a new one with a note to the system builder that "this better have the newest drivers you slime".

But really I just click the update button when it tells me there's an update.