QOTW: Do you auto-optimise your PC games?

[zaph0d]

I mix and match - Generally start with the AMD settings and adjust from there based on the game.
For eg, for Racing, FPS and such smooth fps are king but for RPG's and Strategy games I'd rather have the extra quality as long as the game's not a slideshow.

[Meowdance]

Had GTAV running great. Geforce Experience told me I had my settings all wrong after the GTA Driver came out. Clicked to optimise and my framerates went totally awful. Set everything back to my own settings and it looked better and ran smoother. Generally tend to set my own settings for games, everyone has their own preferences over visuals vs smoothness and such.

[jag272]

Had GTAV running great. Geforce Experience told me I had my settings all wrong after the GTA Driver came out. Clicked to optimise and my framerates went totally awful. Set everything back to my own settings and it looked better and ran smoother. Generally tend to set my own settings for games, everyone has their own preferences over visuals vs smoothness and such.

And this demonstrates the whole issue with auto-optimise. For my I had the complete opposite result with GTA V as I mentioned on the last page, it varies so wildy by configuration that its just impossible to really form an overall opinion on it. Personally I have a pretty good idea what I'm doing with manual settings even if I sometimes have to look up definitions so I just stick with that, holding auto-optimise as a last resort to see if it manages to do anything I didn't as it did with GTA V.

[jjgreenwood]

used to on my 1080p screen and amd hd7970 but just upgraded to gtx980 and a 3440x1440 screen and geforce experience doesn't set stuff to 21:9 so I do it manually now.

[failquail]

I've found it helpful to get ballpark estimations on what sort of settings could work, but i've never yet just hit optimise and run with it because they tend to be overly conservative settings in my opinion (Raptr in my case).

[ZaO]

QOTW: Are you a noob?

[Kecman]

Never. Auto-optimizing kills the fun in tweaking the game to find the limits of your PC. Also it turns on some stuff, like Anti-Aliasing, that you don't need if you have an older PC.

[atomicWAR]

I sometimes use it as a frame of reference if i am having a TON of trouble with game settings hitting 60+ frames. I can't stand to even dip to 58 FPS. That said I rarely have that much trouble so it is very rare that I use the Geforce Experience. Mostly, as I run SLI and I personally find that GE does not account for a second card very well, they aim way to low on filtering settings. Where it is useful is I find some settings are not available or at the least clear in the in game video settings. I see what I am looking for in GE then I can go dig through the config settings manually in WordPad and set it myself.

[TRUTHnTRINITY]

I tend to do my own settings after nvidia optimizes I go in with my own settings to get the very max out of my GPU I aim to stay 45FPS+ for every title

[Bambooz]

I always set everything manually. I've tried Gaming Evolved though (since it was automatically installed with a driver update without ever being asked) and it was more annoying than helpful. Plus it ruined the settings of a few games to the point where I had fluctuating 30fps when it was at solid 60fps (VSync) before. Looked prettier, ran like dog excrement.

PS: For all the GTA V players.. If your game randomly has low framerates around 30-40 when it used to be (a lot) higher, just minimise the game (ALT+TAB out since the windows key is disabled) and bring it back up.. viola.. solid 60fps (or whatever you normally have) again. No idea what this bug is about but this workaround has always helped so far. Works in GTA Online too.. just don't keep it minimised for more than a couple seconds.

[stevie lee]

I tend to put all the settings up to max, apart from AA, Anistropic filtering which I set to about half, any more I don't see the point.

I know very well that min/recommended specs mean bupkis, I'm now running witcher 3, 1.03 patch on mostly medium settings, hairworks on, some post processing off (DoF, Vignetting, motion blur are off), everything in my computer is below minimum specs for witcher 3, so anyone care to explain why its running it without crashing atall and its mostly silky smooth gameplay?

so why would I trust an auto-optimizer to set the settings, when NVidia don't even know what my computer can run. and in what settings?

just checked, and theres about half the games it wants to put the settings down. they run fine as they are.

so no, im not even going to load it up anymore, its useless for me.

[Normanyakuza]

i try everything high on counter strike source....and it started to lag like hell @.@

[deejayburnout]

I use raprt to auto calibrate my games and it seems to do a good job but I always like to try and push the settings a little higher.

[aidanjt]

Yup, GeForce experience. It does a good job of configuring games, most of the time.

[this_is_gav]

I tend not to. GeForce Experience wants me to run Cities: Skylines on the lowest settings for some reason... on a GTX 970 which runs quite happily at the highest settings. :\

It loves a game's HDR setting too, and HDR makes my eyes bleed.

I just use it to notify me of driver updates.

[gingerninja7]

I've found that Geforce Experience MASSIVELY overestimates the capabilities of my 770 in newer titles, so I've stopped using it for them. It seems to target image quality over smoothness, happily settling for settings that result in ~30-40fps, whereas I'd prefer it to target >60 to achieve a locked 60 with V-Sync.