Nvidia-branded Version of Stardock's Impulse Will Auto-Install Graphics Drivers

This is fucking awesome. Anyone who says it's silly/for dumb people/etc? Yeah you've never fucking done IT support then. Serious PC gamers have no clue how serious the barrier is for PC gaming, because they passed it so long ago. PC gaming is dying because support is a hassle. Prosumers can do just fine, but for the average joe, they don't know wtf a driver is, let alone how to update one.

Big props to NVidia and Stardock for trying to actually make the PC gaming experience better.

Microsoft should make their own pc hardware like Macs so that things can be more standard. I guess that's really what the xbox 360 is. Except that it's only for gaming/media/movies.

Or, I should just game on a mac (as well as consoles). The limited releases coming out for pc are usually also found on mac nowadays. The advantage? Apple knows what their hardware is and can provide the correct & working drivers.

It's pure genius since new video card drivers never break old games oh wai-

For many users, updating video drivers has been a complicated and sometimes confusing experience.

Yeah, double clicking on an .exe is bloody confusing.

I love seeing all the bitching about this idea, especially when it's steps like this that are actually tossing a lifeline to the PC game industry to get people to play games on PCs again. While we may all know what updating a graphics driver entails, there are a lot of people out there to whom that makes absolutely no sense. Anything that gets those people (i.e. the mass market) buying games and keeping the PC as a gaming platform alive, the better.

What's with all the bitching? It's not like this is going to hurt anyone, and for the average joe it's a very handy feature. I just hope they have a rollback feature, and even if they don't, you can do it manually then. I'm sure you can turn the automatic updating off or just tell it to skip a version.

I'd understand a few whines but come on... Are gamers really so entitled these days that anything that gets released, that isn't on their very own personal wish list, is a crime and something to cry about?

Woe is the ATI user, woe be there.

"The single biggest issue preventing PC gamers today from having an optimal experience is a failure to update their video card drivers," said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. "

Whether that's correct or now, I'm not sure. I don't have any data. What I do know is that, auto installing or downloading anything is bad.

This one thing that Microsoft should have added to Windows, i dont understand how they cant just add the new driver versions as a windows update instead of the usual;

uninstall old driver
reboot
install new driver
reboot

20 mins wasted

Although as said above generally Graphic card drivers are only usefull when youve bought a new graphics card but soemtimes they do come along with performance boosts for games which is great.

As long as this is an option and not another mandatory update, I think it's a win. People like me who want to update drivers themselves shouldn't be forced to. And other people that can barely tell the difference between a Google search box and a browser address bar can have the benefit of "set it and forget it".

Valve said this was coming to Steam. But that was a long time ago.

If you are getting confused on how to update a video driver then there is something wrong with you.

Should I be an annoying comment user like others and say "Wow, glad I am a console gamer, I don't have to worry about these types of issues".

Its so amazing, anytime I read the comments for any console related game, a handful of users need to bash consoles and talk about how great PCs are. Most understand that a console can't get the graphics quality that a current PC can, especially when they are already 3 years old. No kidding!! But there are benefits to consoles, and this comment section shows one of them. Drivers, rollbacks, configs... It gets crazy sometimes when you just want to play a game.

No platform is perfect... Period!

"The single biggest issue preventing PC gamers today from having an optimal experience is a failure to update their video card drivers"

That really is bull. Well, ok, it's probably true for brand new cards. The first driver or two after tend to be a bit crap. But beyond that, I have never had a need to upgrade drivers to fix issues. I have, on occasion, upgraded drivers to _try_ to fix issues, only to find it created new ones in addition to the original one. I've also a few times upgraded to test for performance gains, and found none.

My general conclusion, after a good number of years of this, is that it's not worth the hassle unless having issues. And even then, it's pretty much just to rule it out. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

Continued Wardell: "For many users, updating video drivers has been a complicated and sometimes confusing experience."

I have never. Ever. Had a problem figuring out where to go/how to update my video drivers. Ever.

Any genius would have downloaded Driver Detective which fixes ALL of your computer's problems! ;-)

if nvidia did this on their own, in order for it to reach the general audiance they would have tyo set it on by default. Which would create nerd rage across the internets like none have ever seen. And shacknews would implode in on itself because the rage inside the latest chatty from the shouts of 'spyware' .

Nice idea, except when new drivers are worse than their older versions. Nvidia has done this a few times by releasing new drivers with support and optimizations for newest model cards that fucks something up on older model cards. A recent example would be the 190.xx series and Fallout3. My GTX 280 runs the game great on 186.xx series and back, but toss on those 190.xx series and it's lagging and freezing at random.

This also is why i'm careful about what games I purchase on Steam. Again, Fallout3 as an example... Steam forces the game to it's latest revision, and on PC that means the VATS bug Bethesda has chosen to ignore. With the retail version, I can leave it at it's release state and it's fine; no update, no problems.

Anyway, I don't think "average Joe/Jane PC gamer" would use a digital service for gaming if he/she had an "average joe/jane" understanding of PC's in the first place. Odds are, if they know how to utilize the service, they probably already know how to update their drivers and do so accordingly...if they don't. well, they need to get educated. (I don't mean any disrespect though)

Readme's and everything else under the sun have been harping on it for a decade now.. "Update your drivers!!!!" While in some cases it helps in others it's just a scapegoat for support helpdesks that don't want to be bothered when a game requires a patch mommy and daddy publisher doesn't want to pay to have issued.

Cool idea by impulse but why don't nvidia/AMD/intel do this themselves?

Only retards need a feature like this.

Translation: DRM is at the video driver level now.

Hell, I'd be happy if Nvidia could write drivers that didn't rearrange your goddamn desktop icons every time you updated.

Hmm. Considering that I uninstalled Stardock a while ago because it would run hidden in the background without a tray icon and download stuff, I am not very optimistic about this.

People here shit on Wardell a lot, but Stardock is making a number of good moves regarding PC gaming. Good on them for this.

I'm just wondering why technology hasn't advanced enough that Nvidia drivers can't just auto-update themselves. Plenty of other programs can do it. I still have to uninstall, reboot, re-install, and reboot again to get everything running properly. I mean, why should I waste my bandwidth and time on downloading the same 100+mb of drivers for games I don't even own?

Maybe we will see less "My new game doesn't work" posts and the reply "Have you updated your drivers?"

hmmm, all this might have been useful a few years ago but the new windows 7 os can now not only detect and install drivers for all your hardware including GPUs but keep them up to date for you as well

I can see the benefits for some people, but this would merely just annoy me. I'd rather have full control over what drivers are installed on my computer. Auto-notification would be nice, but it's just another thing on the computer running that doesn't need to be.

Sweet bloating up the download a hundred megs and auto-installing drivers that might break something else. Make it optional.

Uh. If this is so important, why don't they just make that an option (for both video manufacturers) on the normal Impulse client?

I don't understand why they don't just add a feature that detects yur Ati/Nvidia/intel card and updates.
Why do have have to have a brand marketing version?? *sigh*

Woots!