GeForce Experience has huge potential

Nvidia recently launched its Experience app in closed beta form, limited to the first 10,000 downloads. The app will allow users to automatically download driver updates and will automatically download the optimal settings for games based on your current configuration from a server.




The application has enormous potential for streamlining increasingly frequent driver updates. Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of the more frequent updates, which now seem to come before every major game release, and they were a major reason for me coming back to the nVidia fold after a brief stint with AMD (who also seems to have picked up the pace with driver updates). But the application will present an improved interface for either set-it-and-forget-it updates, or manually downloading the latest beta updates, without the need to fire up a browser and navigate a website.

As for the settings themselves, it sounds like nVidia has a team of testers dedicated to benchmarking the latest games across a wide variety of hardware configurations to provide results very close to our own setup. Additionally, nVidia says that they will be writing the settings directly to the game's configuration files, which means that they can affect settings not normally exposed by a game's settings menus.

Worst case scenario, this app just provides a more convenient way to download driver updates, and gives us "optimal" game settings no better than video games already detect our systems and automatically make video quality adjustments. Best case, however, is that nVidia delivers on its promise to have a team of testers doing what the majority of us already do when we get a game: sit down with it and fiddle with settings for sometimes up to 15-20 minutes trying to find that ideal blend of quality and performance. 

In its current state, the app only supports a handful of the latest releases (read: no Far Cry 3 or Hitman: Absolution), and doesn't appear to support my resolution of 2560x1440, as many users, along with myself, have written in to the forums that the app is, instead, suggesting an "optimal" resolution of 1920x1080 (but apparently, it does support 2560x1600), and other users with slightly more obscure resolutions appear to have similar problems. But again, this is a beta, and the first version at that, I fully expect nVidia to address these issues and to begin adding more and more games as the beta continues.

At the time of this writing, it appears that all 10,000 downloads have been accounted for, but you can still head to their site for more information, as well as register to be informed when it becomes available to more users. Additionally, I'll keep an eye on the page and post an update when more downloads are available.

Source:
GeForce Experience Release Article

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Supported Games 
Supported Hardware