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> Intel CIP is functionally similar to the Telemetry component of the GeForce Software. NVIDIA's Telemetry is installed and enabled by default along with your G

> Intel CIP is functionally similar to the Telemetry component of the GeForce Software. NVIDIA's Telemetry is installed and enabled by default along with your GeForce graphics drivers, and you cannot opt out from it, as it does not even figure in the "custom" installer options. No idea what data Nvidia collects but this sounds even more shady.

LoganDark 3y ago
> No idea what data Nvidia connects but this sounds even more shady. It gets worse - if you're on Windows and your driver was not installed by an OEM (if it didn't come with the computer, or you reinstalled the OS or something), GeForce Experience wants you to connect to the internet and sign into an Nvidia account to access some features of the graphics card, like ShadowPlay.
- haunter 3y ago
  But thankfully GeForce Experience experience is totally optional, you can just select not to install when you install the driver Honestly it doesn't even have any critical feature https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/geforce-experience/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/geforce-experience/
  - bestham 3y ago
    Then you will not be able to access some of the features that is advertised for the hardware you bought (like shadowplay).
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      While you can't use ShadowPlay you can use Nvidia's hardware encoding with software like OBS to do the same thing as ShadowPlay. Actually, it's even better because you can configure OBS to only do it in RAM.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        A good portion of the overhead that ShadowPlay addresses is actually video capture, not just encoding/compression - but IME it's true that even NVENC on its own can take a good load off the CPU.
    - horsawlarway 3y ago
      Doesn't this at least make some sense? ShadowPlay is literally for recording and sharing video. If you don't want Nvidia to record you... It sounds like you don't want shadowplay either.
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        >Doesn't this at least make some sense? No, it doesn't make sense. Why do you need an internet connection in order for your graphics card to record video? Even if it's inherently networked, NASes exist and don't need Nvidia's servers.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        ShadowPlay is not just for uploading recordings to the cloud. ShadowPlay also allows you to capture the output of your GPU without having to insert an external capture card in between. It essentially uses NVENC to generate a video stream before it even leaves the graphics card, so the CPU doesn't have to do nearly as much work.
      - ineedasername 3y ago
        You are equivocating with the use of “record” in two different senses if that word. A person may very reasonably accept one of them without the other.
    - xnyanta 3y ago
      You can still use alternate front-ends to "shadowplay" like OBS replay buffer.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        One of the huge sells of ShadowPlay is that it doesn't place extra burden on Windows to capture the screen every frame, instead it directly captures the actual framebuffer (and encodes the frames) directly on the GPU, without having to switch or bottleneck any rendering code paths. It wouldn't surprise me if people who swear by ShadowPlay can tell the performance difference compared to software screen capture. Basically it aims to replace the need to for an additional out-of-band capture card (those can get very expensive, especially if you want 4k60).
        Aerroon 3y ago
        I don't think you're going to be running into much performance difference between the two. People say GameCapture already grabs the frame buffer, but I can't say whether that's true or not.
        LoganDark 3y ago
        Most likely, different framebuffer - ShadowPlay grabs the exact frames sent to the physical monitor while GameCapture intercepts it in software (most likely anyway, if it doesn't use the Nvidia-specific APIs that ShadowPlay does). The former doesn't require inserting any extra steps into the rendering pipeline, so it's generally faster (sometimes by a lot).
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      Well, for some features you might be able to. Based on around 20 seconds of googling it seems like GeForce Experience has some flags that'll start some things up directly (this may be how they're managed by the interface, I'm not sure). This should include shadowplay if you pass it the `-shadowplay` flag. It's a bit worrying that it already requires this though, the whole thing is as close as it can be to DRM without obviously being DRM. And Nvidia is known to DRM their GPUs a lot.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    Absolutely, I think I have it installed, but it's intentionally one major version behind (GeForce Experience 2 instead of 3) so it won't make me log in, and that works well enough when I certainly don't let it run in the background, I only boot it up for certain buttons it has. I don't remember which ones - I haven't touched it in months, so they must not be that important anyway. Edit: Apparently the GeForce Experience that showed up in my search was actually the one that came in the driver support package for my laptop (which I no longer use), I may have never even used it on this computer at all.
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    No Shadowplay, no Gamestream (so, if you bought an Nvidia Shield for that, you're screwed. No, Sunshine isn't currently at feature parity with Gamestream), no automatic driver updates (which, in this day and age, are quite important for newer games), no Ansel. Nothing critical no, but all things that, if you don't have and need, have no real alternative.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
      I just wait til I run across a game that refuses to start due to old drivers before I bother to update them. Works pretty well as a notification system for me.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Surely you can just firewall off Nvidia's telemetry servers.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    It's a bit hard to log into an Nvidia account without connecting to their servers. But I guess if you're not philosophically opposed to online logins, you could totally just log in and then block its internet access with a firewall rule (either Windows Defender Firewall, or another app like Portmaster). I do this anyway even though I don't have GFE installed because other components of the driver also try to connect to Nvidia's servers for some reason. Not on my watch. (Though I wonder if there is some registry key or something to make GFE believe you've logged in, even if it's never connected to the internet. Surely someone would've figured it out by now.)
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Why do you have to login to enable video recording functionality?
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        I don't know. The app won't let you past a login screen, so you can't use any of the settings. Luckily the Nvidia Control Panel that comes with the driver is devoid of any obstacles whatsoever, but it seems that at least the ShadowPlay implementation happens to live with GeForce Experience.
        PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        Weird, seems like someone would have hacked a workaround as you say.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Huh, I wonder if this applies to people with Linux Nvidia drivers.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Linux drivers don't come with GeForce experience
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    As a long time nvidia-on-linux user, that's an "experience" I'm willing to miss.
wredue 3y ago
Nvidia collects all the same data, and you cannot opt out of it if you run GeForce experience.
- baal80spam 3y ago
  > if you run GeForce experience Exactly. It is a reason I never install it when updating Nvidia drivers (yes I know I'm missing out eg. on shadowplay but I don't use it anyway).
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I think GFE's implementation of ShadowPlay is replicable by third-party/open-source applications as well. It just uses some sorta-undocumented Nvidia APIs to capture the screen without the software overhead: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/msi-afterburner-3-0-0-beta-16-2013-10-25.382760/page-4#post-4687310 https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/msi-afterburner-3-0-0-beta... Not sure if anything like OBS implements this or not.
  - wredue 3y ago
    FYI, I was wrong here. Telemetry on window information, focus times, click spots et al is collected with just the driver. GeForce experience additionally collects personal information.
codedokode 3y ago
Ridiculous, Nvidia cards are expensive and on top of that they collect the data for free.
- RajT88 3y ago
  High end TV's are filled with all the crapware and telemetry shenanigans of the low end TV's as well. Why would companies not double dip?
buro9 3y ago
DNS block: events.gfe.nvidia.com lightstep.kaizen.nvidia.com

LoganDark 3y ago

> No idea what data Nvidia connects but this sounds even more shady. It gets worse - if you're on Windows and your driver was not installed by an OEM (if it didn't come with the computer, or you reinstalled the OS or something), GeForce Experience wants you to connect to the internet and sign into an Nvidia account to access some features of the graphics card, like ShadowPlay.

haunter 3y ago
But thankfully GeForce Experience experience is totally optional, you can just select not to install when you install the driver Honestly it doesn't even have any critical feature https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/geforce-experience/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/geforce-experience/
- bestham 3y ago
  Then you will not be able to access some of the features that is advertised for the hardware you bought (like shadowplay).
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    While you can't use ShadowPlay you can use Nvidia's hardware encoding with software like OBS to do the same thing as ShadowPlay. Actually, it's even better because you can configure OBS to only do it in RAM.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      A good portion of the overhead that ShadowPlay addresses is actually video capture, not just encoding/compression - but IME it's true that even NVENC on its own can take a good load off the CPU.
  - horsawlarway 3y ago
    Doesn't this at least make some sense? ShadowPlay is literally for recording and sharing video. If you don't want Nvidia to record you... It sounds like you don't want shadowplay either.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      >Doesn't this at least make some sense? No, it doesn't make sense. Why do you need an internet connection in order for your graphics card to record video? Even if it's inherently networked, NASes exist and don't need Nvidia's servers.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      ShadowPlay is not just for uploading recordings to the cloud. ShadowPlay also allows you to capture the output of your GPU without having to insert an external capture card in between. It essentially uses NVENC to generate a video stream before it even leaves the graphics card, so the CPU doesn't have to do nearly as much work.
    - ineedasername 3y ago
      You are equivocating with the use of “record” in two different senses if that word. A person may very reasonably accept one of them without the other.
  - xnyanta 3y ago
    You can still use alternate front-ends to "shadowplay" like OBS replay buffer.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      One of the huge sells of ShadowPlay is that it doesn't place extra burden on Windows to capture the screen every frame, instead it directly captures the actual framebuffer (and encodes the frames) directly on the GPU, without having to switch or bottleneck any rendering code paths. It wouldn't surprise me if people who swear by ShadowPlay can tell the performance difference compared to software screen capture. Basically it aims to replace the need to for an additional out-of-band capture card (those can get very expensive, especially if you want 4k60).
      - Aerroon 3y ago
        I don't think you're going to be running into much performance difference between the two. People say GameCapture already grabs the frame buffer, but I can't say whether that's true or not.
        LoganDark 3y ago
        Most likely, different framebuffer - ShadowPlay grabs the exact frames sent to the physical monitor while GameCapture intercepts it in software (most likely anyway, if it doesn't use the Nvidia-specific APIs that ShadowPlay does). The former doesn't require inserting any extra steps into the rendering pipeline, so it's generally faster (sometimes by a lot).
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    Well, for some features you might be able to. Based on around 20 seconds of googling it seems like GeForce Experience has some flags that'll start some things up directly (this may be how they're managed by the interface, I'm not sure). This should include shadowplay if you pass it the `-shadowplay` flag. It's a bit worrying that it already requires this though, the whole thing is as close as it can be to DRM without obviously being DRM. And Nvidia is known to DRM their GPUs a lot.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  Absolutely, I think I have it installed, but it's intentionally one major version behind (GeForce Experience 2 instead of 3) so it won't make me log in, and that works well enough when I certainly don't let it run in the background, I only boot it up for certain buttons it has. I don't remember which ones - I haven't touched it in months, so they must not be that important anyway. Edit: Apparently the GeForce Experience that showed up in my search was actually the one that came in the driver support package for my laptop (which I no longer use), I may have never even used it on this computer at all.
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  No Shadowplay, no Gamestream (so, if you bought an Nvidia Shield for that, you're screwed. No, Sunshine isn't currently at feature parity with Gamestream), no automatic driver updates (which, in this day and age, are quite important for newer games), no Ansel. Nothing critical no, but all things that, if you don't have and need, have no real alternative.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
    I just wait til I run across a game that refuses to start due to old drivers before I bother to update them. Works pretty well as a notification system for me.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Surely you can just firewall off Nvidia's telemetry servers.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  It's a bit hard to log into an Nvidia account without connecting to their servers. But I guess if you're not philosophically opposed to online logins, you could totally just log in and then block its internet access with a firewall rule (either Windows Defender Firewall, or another app like Portmaster). I do this anyway even though I don't have GFE installed because other components of the driver also try to connect to Nvidia's servers for some reason. Not on my watch. (Though I wonder if there is some registry key or something to make GFE believe you've logged in, even if it's never connected to the internet. Surely someone would've figured it out by now.)
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Why do you have to login to enable video recording functionality?
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      I don't know. The app won't let you past a login screen, so you can't use any of the settings. Luckily the Nvidia Control Panel that comes with the driver is devoid of any obstacles whatsoever, but it seems that at least the ShadowPlay implementation happens to live with GeForce Experience.
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        Weird, seems like someone would have hacked a workaround as you say.

hospitalJail 3y ago

Huh, I wonder if this applies to people with Linux Nvidia drivers.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Linux drivers don't come with GeForce experience
- gpderetta 3y ago
  As a long time nvidia-on-linux user, that's an "experience" I'm willing to miss.

wredue 3y ago

Nvidia collects all the same data, and you cannot opt out of it if you run GeForce experience.

baal80spam 3y ago
> if you run GeForce experience Exactly. It is a reason I never install it when updating Nvidia drivers (yes I know I'm missing out eg. on shadowplay but I don't use it anyway).
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I think GFE's implementation of ShadowPlay is replicable by third-party/open-source applications as well. It just uses some sorta-undocumented Nvidia APIs to capture the screen without the software overhead: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/msi-afterburner-3-0-0-beta-16-2013-10-25.382760/page-4#post-4687310 https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/msi-afterburner-3-0-0-beta... Not sure if anything like OBS implements this or not.
- wredue 3y ago
  FYI, I was wrong here. Telemetry on window information, focus times, click spots et al is collected with just the driver. GeForce experience additionally collects personal information.

codedokode 3y ago

Ridiculous, Nvidia cards are expensive and on top of that they collect the data for free.

RajT88 3y ago
High end TV's are filled with all the crapware and telemetry shenanigans of the low end TV's as well. Why would companies not double dip?

buro9 3y ago

DNS block: events.gfe.nvidia.com lightstep.kaizen.nvidia.com