GeForce Experience 1.8: Introducing Adjustable Optimal Playable Settings & Significant ShadowPlay Up

Gregster · 2 Dec 2013 at 15:31

Since its release this January, GeForce Experience has optimised millions of gamers’ systems, giving them optimal game settings, the latest drivers and profiles, access to SHIELD game streaming, and with the release of GeForce Experience 1.7 last month, the ability to automatically capture gameplay footage with a minimal performance impact through the integrated ShadowPlay application.

Today, we are releasing GeForce Experience 1.8, which includes game-changing Optimal Playable Setting functionality, and a number of ShadowPlay updates that make the innovative, critically-lauded gameplay recorder even better at capturing your favourite action-packed moments.

Introducing Adjustable Optimal Playable Settings

The core of GeForce Experience is its Optimal Playable Settings function, which recommends ideal combinations of settings customised for each system, giving gamers the perfect balance between image quality and performance.

At launch, GeForce Experience offered an easy one-click solution to often-complicated game configuration. It was a major innovation for gamers unsure of what to change to improve performance and fidelity, and for gamers intimidated by dozens of acronym-laced settings. For them, consoles were more appealing – a simple plug and play solution. With GeForce Experience, we brought those gamers back into a world of high-definition, super-high fidelity gaming. Over time, it was clear from user feedback that while all loved the idea of GeForce Experience, some preferred to have a super-smooth 60 frames per second experience, while others preferred 30 frames per second with superior image quality.

Today, with the release of GeForce Experience 1.8, users can now open a new in-app panel that enables customisation of our one-click Optimal Playable Settings. Resolutions up to 3840x2160 can be applied, Fullscreen, Windowed and Borderless Windowed modes can be selected, and optimal settings altered with the movement of a slider, enabling users to choose between default Optimal settings and those that favour image quality over performance, or vice versa.

GeForce ShadowPlay has taken the gaming scene by storm since its introduction last month. Being ‘always on’ when gaming allows gamers to save the last twenty minutes of action to disk with a single button press, meaning you never again say “I wish I had recorded that”. Be that an incredible RPG chopper kill, or your first League of Legends Pentakill. For gamers who prefer to record everything, ShadowPlay also has a traditional recording mode that can be manually toggled on and off in-game, enabling an entire session to be saved to disk as you play.

In addition to these innovative features, ShadowPlay has drawn further praise from gamers for using H.264 hardware encoders built into GeForce GTX 600 and 700 Series desktop GPUs, minimising the performance impact of recording to a few frames per second. In comparison to other recording applications, the impact is considerably lower, resulting in a superior, smoother experience for the player. And by saving to H.264, file sizes are manageable, clips can be edited quickly, and final footage uploaded without delay to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

With the release of GeForce Experience 1.8, we’ve implemented many of the community’s most requested enhancements. First and foremost, Windows 7 users can now save up to 20 minutes of Shadow Mode footage, just like Windows 8 users, and Windows 7 Manual Mode is no longer restricted to a single 3.8GB file – footage is now recorded continually across multiple files until the moment you run out of HDD or SSD space.

Sounds like some great improvements and I will be giving this a spin later. I will report back as well on any bugs/glitches and performance hits

http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/articles/geforce-experience-1-8-released

Download link

murah · 2 Dec 2013 at 15:53

Just tested with BF4, MUCH less performance hit than before (roughly 5-10% rather than 20%+) , shadowplay video looks really good and I can confirm that it records your Mic.

Nice features on GFE 1.8 indeed, although I tend to set my own graphics settings.

Silent_Scone · 2 Dec 2013 at 16:03

Cheers Greg. Will have a play later

teppic · 2 Dec 2013 at 16:12

The customised optimal thing is welcome, as it defaults to recommending FXAA all the time even when the card is more than capable of 8xMSAA.

Orangey · 2 Dec 2013 at 16:54

Does this have any kind of syncing with youtube/other sites? What would be great is if they worked with youtube to automagical upload footage into a cache as you play. Then you could edit it via browser.

Shaftydude · 2 Dec 2013 at 17:30

murah said:
Just tested with BF4, MUCH less performance hit than before (roughly 5-10% rather than 20%+) , shadowplay video looks really good and I can confirm that it records your Mic.

Nice features on GFE 1.8 indeed, although I tend to set my own graphics settings.

I wish their was a inbuilt benchmark to confirm the differences.

Deceptor · 2 Dec 2013 at 17:34

Shaftydude said:
I wish their was a inbuilt benchmark to confirm the differences.

Well if you monitored your FPS prior and with it now... then you know

layte · 2 Dec 2013 at 18:32

So how do I change the recording res? I just did a recording while running at 1600p and it downsampled it to 1080p.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2013 at 18:55

layte said:
So how do I change the recording res? I just did a recording while running at 1600p and it downsampled it to 1080p.

I believe that will be in a future update

Finners · 2 Dec 2013 at 18:56

Good on nvidia, this is moving in the right direction. Was waiting for mic recording to be enabled as all my videos are full of one sided conversations.

All excited and just tried it out and there is no push to record option! Maybe ill be waiting to the next update to record my mic.

murah are you really seeing that much of a performance hit? In tomb raider benchmark i saw ~3%

FuF · 2 Dec 2013 at 19:35

Yeah, it may be a good step. Will see how they implement it. I did find that nVidia experience is quite a decent piece of software so far.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2013 at 20:06

Before switching on ShadowPlay

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
13802, 149948, 59, 134, 92.045

After switching on ShadowPlay (on but not recording)

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
34584, 579809, 28, 129, 59.647
I had a game exiting error, so the 28 fps is where I was quitting. I am sure it wasn't that low prior.

That was using the same map (Siege of Shanghai) and performance was very stuttery for me. I have also just done a fresh install of Windows 7. I will run a couple of other bench runs.

Silent_Scone · 2 Dec 2013 at 20:43

I noticed some stuttering with it enabled too, but thought it might have been lag, as it's less of an impact with 3 cards (obviously).

Seems it's still ropey.

I'd do some comparisons but TBH, it's obvious it's not right from what you've posted Greg so not much point lol

Gregster · 2 Dec 2013 at 20:49

Well after testing it on Metro LL and Tomb Raider, I can see it is just buggy on BF4 for me. Maybe because it is 64 bit?

On Tomb Raider, without I got 79.8 - 97.9 - 120.6
and with it on I got 64.1 - 88.7 - 112.8

Which is a 10% hit on performance and roughly 5% on MLL. Not stuttery in those bench runs either.

Sin_Chase · 2 Dec 2013 at 22:25

Can someone check if Mic and Game audio recording is placed into separate audio tracks or combined onto the same single audio channel?

Edit - Single combined channel apparently

Orangey · 2 Dec 2013 at 22:39

Gregster said:
Well after testing it on Metro LL and Tomb Raider, I can see it is just buggy on BF4 for me. Maybe because it is 64 bit?

On Tomb Raider, without I got 79.8 - 97.9 - 120.6
and with it on I got 64.1 - 88.7 - 112.8

Which is a 10% hit on performance and roughly 5% on MLL. Not stuttery in those bench runs either.

Shadowplay is supposed to be 64bit itself isn't it? You can run BF4 in 32bit as well.

Josh · 2 Dec 2013 at 22:40

Thanks for posting this, shadow play has been brilliant for me, helped me capture some great footage.

Very impressed.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2013 at 23:41

Orangey said:
Shadowplay is supposed to be 64bit itself isn't it? You can run BF4 in 32bit as well.

Not to sure but after messing about with it in various games, the only game it is being an ass in is BF4. Maybe others are not having an issue but for me it is too stuttery.

stephenb · 2 Dec 2013 at 23:45

Other changes of note include the ability to capture footage at native resolution and aspect ratios up to 1920x1080 (beyond 1920x1080 the aspect ratio is preserved), and the reduction of stuttering during playback of captured video.

This is good news, sounds like recording in surround resolution may now be possible. Anyone tried it yet?