The GeForce Experience 2.0
Today, NVIDIA along with the 337.50 Beta Driver, has released the GeForce Experience 2.0. The GeForce Experience 2.0 brings three important new features that everyone should be excited about. First off, the GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay finally come to all 600, 700, and 800 series laptops. Battery Boost is also now available for notebooks with a dedicated NVIDIA GPU with this update. GeForce Experience 2.0 also brings desktop capture to ShadowPlay for both Desktop PC and notebook owners.
The GeForce Experience allows NVIDIA users to take advantage of their hardware by automatically optimizing over 150 of the most popular games, giving users the best experience they can get for their hardware. It also provides performance options so users can decide whether they want a better-looking game or smoother gameplay.
Until today though, GeForce Experience had only been available for desktop GPU users. With this new update, notebook users also can have the GeForce Experience keep them automatically updated with new driver updates as well as take advantage of streaming their games to Shield. Included on notebooks with this update is NVIDIAs Battery Boost, giving notebooks up to a two times longer battery life. With ShadowPlay on notebooks, users can stream to twitch or record locally, all while taking a small performance hit.
The GeForce Experience 2.0 gives notebook users the ability to stream their PC games to Shield. Using GameStream, Shield can now stream on the go from your PC or notebook. So whether you’re at home or out and about, you can always use Shield to play your favorite PC titles.
Unfortunately, this AlienBabelTech Editor does not currently have access to a notebook with NVIDIA dedicated graphics or NVIDIA’s Shield handheld. Look for a review of these features and devices in the near future.
Streaming to Twitch and recording local game footage using ShadowPlay has become a very popular feature of the GeForce Experience. Before, you could only record or stream the full-screen game. If you tabbed out or quit, the recording would stop which made it very hard to stream or record games like League of Legends. Well, starting today, you can now capture your desktop whether you are streaming or recording locally. This is a big feature that a majority of people had wanted from the GeForce Experience and that day is finally here. Lets take a look at recording with ShadowPlay. It is important to note that ShadowPlay is still in beta at this time.
ShadowPlay is by far the easiest recording program to use. If you already have the most recent NVIDIA driver installed then you have the GeForce Experience. Just open GeForce Experience and navigate to the ShadowPlay button in the upper right. Once clicked, click what looks like to be a switch and ShadowPlay is now on and ready to be used. You can then enable a microphone or webcam, decide what resolution you’d like to record at, and if you want to stream to Twitch instead of recording locally.
To start ShadowPlay just hit alt + F8 and now you are recording/streaming.
Here you can watch me playing Respawn’s Titanfall using ShadowPlay to record.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCil0NBc7yQ
Video from : www.youtube.comThe video is a great 720p recording of the game. Videos recorded like this are easily uploaded to YouTube or to your favorite video site to be shared. Streaming to Twitch is just as easy. Just sign in and start broadcasting quality video with no noticeable performance loss. If you play games that can’t always be displayed at full screen, be sure to enable desktop capture. That way you can capture every single part of the game, including the lobby.
An unannounced feature to ShadowPlay, Twitch Streaming, is the ability to pause and resume your live stream. You can still talk to the stream while they see a pause sign, keeping what you do private. It’s an important feature allowing you to minimize starting and stopping the stream.
For the past week, I have been using the GeForce Experience 2.0 to stream to my personal Twitch channel. For the most part, everything was flawless. Occasionally, my webcam would disable itself on stream even though its active light was on. I also found if you constantly switch back and forth between game and other programs, ShadowPlay has a way of disabling itself. I really would like to see a bigger notification when something is amiss.
Overall, even in a beta state, ShadowPlay is an impressive feature and is worthy of praise. To compete with OBS or XSpilt, however, NVIDIA needs to fine-tune the software and add features such as switchable scenes or chroma key support. ShadowPlay is by far the best way to get the best performance when streaming or recording PC games. We can’t wait to see the final product when it comes out of beta.
The GeForce Experience continues to get better and blows competing services such as Raptr out of the water. Official optimizable games are added frequently. It’s a simple way to get notified about driver updates and SLI profiles while including exclusive features like GameStream and ShadowPlay. If you have a NVIDIA GPU, you have to get the GeForce Experience.
Look out soon for Part 2 of my review of the GeForce Experience as new features are added, including an in-depth look at the performance lost when streaming and recording with ShadowPlay. If you enjoyed this article, please check out the performance overview of NVIDIAs new 337.50 Beta driver that was also released today. As always, please check out the ABT forums and thank you for your patience while we work out some technical difficulties.
–Erik Nilsen
ABT Gaming Editor
