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Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

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Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#31

Post by giancarlostoro »

existencebox wrote: post #14
LinuxBender wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blocked their telemetry and not I can't even update my drivers. Not through windows update, nor through their installer. It hangs trying to talk back to them. No harm, no foul, probably time to give AMD cards a chance. Variety is the spice of life and the spice must flow.

As much as I welcome the capitalistic response, I'm worried it won't be enough. As much as I'd love true competition in the GPU/CPU space, it doesn't exist. AMD's cards simply cannot compete with Nvidia for GPGPU type scenarios, and even in its basic capacity, often have known heat/perf issues. Now that may be worth it for now to make a statement against the telemetry, but what if (less if and more when IMO) AMD then…

Odd, I always bought AMD and only ever had issues if I overclocked them. The one time I have an Nvidia card, all I have is issues with drivers, both on Windows and Linux. The only thing that impresses me that Nvidia has done is the Nvidia Shield Tablet, and they made it less impressive with their K1 rendition of it. There's also the Nintendo Switch but it's yet to be determined if Nintendo is doing something amazing with it, or losing out on another big opportunity. Nvidia does not impress me. I've had AMD for years, and have had a solid investment every time. Of course this is my experience, other people's may vary. My main complaint against AMD is Linux drivers either exist, or they don't, they either work, or they don't. With Nvidia it's the same, some people / distros keep a specific driver version because Nvidia breaks a previous one with their 'fixes'.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#32

Post by existencebox »

lightedman wrote: post #15
existencebox wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I welcome the capitalistic response, I'm worried it won't be enough. As much as I'd love true competition in the GPU/CPU space, it doesn't exist. AMD's cards simply cannot compete with Nvidia for GPGPU type scenarios, and even in its basic capacity, often have known heat/perf issues. Now that may be worth it for now to make a statement against the telemetry, but what if (less if and more when IMO) AMD then…

" AMD's cards simply cannot compete with Nvidia for GPGPU type scenarios" Really? Which brand of GPU pretty much ran Bitcoin during its inception, again?

You're absolutely right, HOWEVER, I would call that the exception rather than the rule, as IIRC it was largely due to AMD supporting some operators in a more native/optimized form than Nvidia did at the time, than any sort of true general purpose superiority. Given how quickly mining moved to ASICS I wouldn't use that as an advocation that they're (ASICS) superior to Nvidia for GPGPU functionality. (Special-purpose specially-designed, no doubt, but that's not really "General")

Edit: read a sister post later article on the breakdown of the perf differences, and it seems to slightly affirm what I'm saying (re: bitcoin aligning with a functionality AMD performed very strongly in), although I'll admit to have only skimmed it.

I will say though, even despite this, it doesn't address the known heat/power issues even the "heyday" amd cards seemed to suffer from and that were still present when I was comparing them while looking at a 1070 recently.

EDIT: since I can't edit my original post any more, I'd note here that I didn't intend to turn this into a NVIDIA/AMD debate, even if we ignore that for a moment and consider it a duopoly situation instead of monoply, I'd ask readers to consider my core point in that light.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#33

Post by wwalexander »

KirinDave wrote: post #19
bnmillar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly for all the previous things they have done, for example their lack of driver support for free operating systems which is why Linus said this, their lack of Free Software drivers, their tight lockdown on proprietary technologies like PhysX that hurts portability and hurts non-Nvidia users and finally default collection of telemetry data is a highly unethical practice and the inclusion of the extra code to do i…

> Firstly for all the previous things they have done, for example their lack of driver support for free operating systems which is why Linus said this It is not Nvidia's job to prop up the desktop linux ecosystem. It's wise not to invest time in that ecosystem, as far as I can tell. It's got an ongoing history of disappointing its customers and vendors over and over. And we get good enough computational support ever…

NVIDIA could release documentation on their hardware that would make it easier for Nouveau developers to do their work, but they don't. Nobody is asking for free labor on a low-marketshare OS.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#34

Post by ajnin »

existencebox wrote: post #14
LinuxBender wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blocked their telemetry and not I can't even update my drivers. Not through windows update, nor through their installer. It hangs trying to talk back to them. No harm, no foul, probably time to give AMD cards a chance. Variety is the spice of life and the spice must flow.

As much as I welcome the capitalistic response, I'm worried it won't be enough. As much as I'd love true competition in the GPU/CPU space, it doesn't exist. AMD's cards simply cannot compete with Nvidia for GPGPU type scenarios, and even in its basic capacity, often have known heat/perf issues. Now that may be worth it for now to make a statement against the telemetry, but what if (less if and more when IMO) AMD then…

AMD are already doing sneaky things with their driver autoupdate on Windows, they put the checkbox below the "upgrade" button, prechecked and with a large spacing so it is likely you don't see it immediately and click "upgrade" before you realize it, and they also present the checkbox at least twice, rechecking it if you unchecked it previously. So I fear that after that move by Nvidia they'll feel empowered to push more things on the user.

I'm worried about the semiconductor industry in general as well, there is a lot of concentration currently all over the place, not sure where it's going to stop, and at some degree competition is going to become less fierce, you don't need to get to a monopoly but an oligopoly is likely and will lead to tacit agreement on market separation and price fixing as in the telecom industry.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#35

Post by eswat »

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but I’m surprised this and the forced login for GeForce Experience didn’t make a bigger wave amongst gamers, who’ve historically been very vocal about questionable decisions that provide far more value to the business than to the gamers.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#36

Post by pizza234 »

brink wrote: post #6

On a related note; I can't even use NVidia's "Geforce Experience" any more without logging in. Thanks for that, NVidia. Just what I wanted; a driver tool that forces me to log in.

As a workaround, you can download v2 (and prevent the updates). I think the games data(base) used is the same, so you can obtain the same acceleration, without the hassles of v3.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#37

Post by dogma1138 »

aluhut wrote: post #30
dogma1138 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, atm NVIDIA and AMD can only get display driver crash data directly from Microsoft. From what I've been told they not only have to pay for it, but while the data has statistical significance it has very low technical value on it's own. So as far as things go now what happens is, new game is released, players with card X and configuration Y N P and Z complain about driver crashes over reddit/forums, NVIDIA/AMD pic…

So would it hurt them in some way if they would ask first?

Yes and no, while opt-in is important for privacy and other concerns the problem is that virtually no one opts in.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#38

Post by nobodyshere »

eswat wrote: post #35

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but I’m surprised this and the forced login for GeForce Experience didn’t make a bigger wave amongst gamers, who’ve historically been very vocal about questionable decisions that provide far more value to the business than to the gamers.

Well, I simply uninstalled the whole thing. Will download drivers manually now. Same for razer synapse. Anything that requires me to have an account for no obvious reason has no place on my system.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#39

Post by webkike »

nobodyshere wrote: post #38
eswat wrote: post #35

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but I’m surprised this and the forced login for GeForce Experience didn’t make a bigger wave amongst gamers, who’ve historically been very vocal about questionable decisions that provide far more value to the business than to the gamers.

Well, I simply uninstalled the whole thing. Will download drivers manually now. Same for razer synapse. Anything that requires me to have an account for no obvious reason has no place on my system.

Likewise. I originally downloaded GeForce experience when I was installing my drivers. When I noticed login was required I uninstalled and downloaded the drivers manually.

Re: Nvidia adds telemetry to latest drivers

#40

Post by dogma1138 »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #28
dogma1138 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, atm NVIDIA and AMD can only get display driver crash data directly from Microsoft. From what I've been told they not only have to pay for it, but while the data has statistical significance it has very low technical value on it's own. So as far as things go now what happens is, new game is released, players with card X and configuration Y N P and Z complain about driver crashes over reddit/forums, NVIDIA/AMD pic…

Fair enough, allow people to click "send to nvidia" upon an actual crash, and allow a permanent opt-out. Isn't this the way companies have been handling crash reports since... forever?

I agree that there should be an opt-out option (other than not installing GFE, tho considering that GFE has always phoned home I don't know if that is that important), yes in an ideal world people should opt-in, the problem is that almost no one does.

Anyone who ever worked on a crash report system knows that opt-in rates are below 10% even for corporate clients. Heck if you are lucky you get single digit % figures on "send this report" even if the checkbox is ticked by default, the vast majority of people just hit cancel.

The stats are actually pretty darn interesting, especially for image quality vs fps I had a chance to speak to a few reps from NVIDIA once and they told me that as much as PC players bitch and moan about 60fps vsync the vast majority of them would push settings at the expense of smooth(er) framerates even if they have no to very little effect on image quality.

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