Ianosm wrote:
Hi all,
Firstly apologies in advance if these queries are already all over the place and have been answered, I did look, honest!
I just got a G750jm and I was reading through the forums here about certain people experiencing 'BSODs' when updating drivers, I just wanted to ask then if I should be accepting the 'Ge-force experience update' that is showing under the Nvidia tray or if I should stick with the drivers etc that were there when I set it up yesterday (330.62 or something) which some of the posts here suggest are the only current stable ones?
I am slightly afraid of updating the drivers but at the same time just want to get the best performance at present.
Speaking of performance, I have also just invested in an SSD to put in the main slot instead of the 7200rpm HDD (750gb) that it came with (will use the HDD in the second slot for storage etc). The SSD I bought was a Samsung 840 Evo 250gb and I just wanted to check if anyone else has or is using this and whether it has been a good choice?
Thanks in advance for any replies/advice!
Ianosm wrote:
Thanks very much for the replies/advice guys, much appreciated!
If I could just ask one more, hopefully easy, question. Is there anywhere where I could look up what settings should be set in the Nvidia control panel?
I was looking around there and I have set the global preference etc to 'Nvidia high performance processor' as I have seen advised but I checked the 'Set Physx configuration' tab and it's default set to the CPU (the other options being 'auto select' and GPU).
Is this correct? I would have thought that the GPU was the default choice given that's its main job etc. Just wanted to check if you guys have it set to CPU etc
Well I will shed some practical issues/etc from my experience with your first question and then down to others in regards to Nvidia Drivers/Physx settings,
Updating Geforce Experience/Nvidia Graphics Driver: Okay, so these are two different things, when you talk about the Geforce Experience, that's a different app altogether then the Driver allowing you to Optimize your Games, do streaming, record, etc., however yes Nvidia has made it a little bit confusing when updating Nvidia Drivers, it's a bundle and checks for Geforce Experience/Graphics driver, then the Physx and so forth, and people go ahead and update all three of them, normally if you just go express it always go with the default, ie; updating the Geforce Experience, Graphics Driver and then the Physx and so on, if required depending on the versions installed previously. When just updating the Geforce Experience it does not update the Driver it will only update the Geforce Experience version and yes if you have the check box to notify you about the Nvidia Graphics Driver updates then definitely it will tell you to update those separately as well.
I always go for the Custom Installation followed by 'Clean Driver Installation' and see what I have installed and what is it asking me to update to, compare the versions either by seeing what problems are occurring on the new Nvidia Drivers/Geforce Experience released by Nvidia before updating them, the drivers you can always see the feedback over here by users telling you beforehand what to expect and what to not, or if it is simply alright to go ahead and update the Nvidia Graphic Drivers if no problems have been reported on JM.
When it comes to Geforce Experience, if your a user like me who does Stream Games/Record Games using Shadowplay etc, then this will be as vital for you as the Nvidia Graphic Driver itself. To check for the Geforce Experience if Shadowplay/Gamestream is working with the latest update you can simply go to Nvidia Forums and check those top threads out to have an idea if there are certain people posting their with problems after their recent update and avoid having that misfortune of not updating the Geforce Experience at all, or vice versa.
To put this to practical means, Nvidia released an update on July 25th if am correct about the date on their Geforce Experience to version 2.1.1 and it turned out, this particular update, brought in tons of problems while using Shadowplay moreover the Shadowplay Icon itself had a Red line, and there was no possible way to record/stream or use it at all, 7 of my friends who have all Laptops with 'M' Graphics cards Asus/Alienware/MSI etc, had the same problems after this particular update and we had raised a lot of tickets/feedback's on their original support after going through their forums, it seems tons of people had this problem with various different laptops using M cards after this version and it affected only the laptop users. It definitely messed something up, because even if you uninstall and installed the old version where everything worked fine correctly, you still had this problem, because of the alteration to the previous Registry done by the new version. Hence forth, I do NOT recommend updating everything just like that before you actually have done some R&D here, and their official forums, and then to despair later on searching for fixes.
After a month and a half, came the Geforce Experience version 2.1.1.1 which fixed everything the previous one caused just with a simple update click,
Geforce Experience Nvidia Offical Forums - https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/110/
Normally, I have disabled the Auto Download/Notification of the latest Nvidia Graphics Card updates from the Geforce App and just have it check for updates for Geforce Experience.
When you talk Nvidia Graphics Card for example, you have everyone having BSOD's on their JM's updating to latest after 332.60 and one user here just like hmscott wrote above who did not had any issues. It could be as simple as the games/apps he's using or he's not doing what others have done, in order to reproduce the same problem which in-turn caused the BSOD to appear. There could be a lot of reasons 🙂
Coming to the SSD, it is indeed a good choice and you won't be disappointed 😄
When you talk about Physx, I would not keep it on Default, reason simply was when I played Metro Last Light, with Phsyx being on Default (CPU) I got around 20 FPS and it seemed the game was just impossible to play, when I turned it on Nvidia GPU, the performance and the gameplay was just wow produced from this beast (JZ) :)! But yea I also did a playthrough with it with turning the Physx off, it all comes down to personal perspective 😄 up to you on that part, there are many Apps/Games which will give less results on the Default CPU when required Physx.
However there are also many games/apps which simply don't understand the logic off 2 GPUs and just go with the default Intel one, destroying your laptop experience/don't feel dishearted 'when there's a will, there's always a solution out there!' :), we all hate the optimus don't we, although I have yet to face any real problems with it as others have mentioned yet 'keeping fingers crossed still'.
Oh yes I forgot to mention, I have two models my main is JZ, and I also have a JM, the drivers/geforce/physx configuration on them are as follows,
1) JZ - Nvidia Graphics Driver 340.52/Geforce Exp 2.1.2/ Physx latest (was lazy to jump to 344.11 that day so I slept, but yea will do it very soon)
2) JM - Nvidia Graphics Driver 332.60/Geforce Exp 2.1.2/ Physx latest
Don't forget to have the GPU Activity Icon ready on your Taskbar, it helps alot to tell you if a certain App/Game did actually switched over to Nvidia GPU or not :D! You can turn it on from the 'Nvidia Control Panel' as shown below.
Furthermore, go ahead enjoy your beast, hopefully you won't encounter such problems as many, these machines performances are top notch to be honest, and good luck! If you need any other info, do let us know how it all works out :)!
Ianosm wrote:
Thanks so much for all your advice and help guys and Kelusion in particular for that very detailed post, very much appreciated.
Happy to say I got the SSD installed no problem and now booting up and loading games etc faster than ever which is very nice. Samsung SSD seems to have this magician software to 'optimise' the ssd performance, when I click on this it seems to enable it's own 'High Performance' power settings. These seem to overide the 'Power4Gear' high performance power settings etc, I don't imagine there's a large difference either way once the laptop is plugged in?
I clicked on the overall Nvidia update before i got to read your post Kelusion so I clicked on express install! Seems I am now fully updated on GeForce Experience and Drivers 344.11 (which are the latest I believe?). While it has only been 2 days, I haven't experienced any BSOD's yet so fingers crossed that continues.
I will put the physx to GPU as you suggested and see what happens in terms of performance etc. I do indeed have that GPU monitoring open and so far it seems to be selecting the GPU for everything as I intended.
At the moment I am trying to optimise the various settings under the 'manage 3d' tab on the Nvidia panel, in terms of the various options. If anyone else has a 750jm with 860m card and would have any suggestions on the various settings I would of course welcome any advice since I am very new to this.
Glad to hear that the SSD is working out great for you :D, ofcourse these SSD's are very good and come with the high performance feature as you mentioned. You can remove the 'Power4Gear' and just stick to the windows one as it's much better then the one coming along with Asus if you wish, no problem there.
As per the Graphics Driver updating on the JM to 344.11 well I wouldn't say that's a smart move but yes keep your fingers crossed, although I doubt it'll go on well for the long haul bringing in a lot of BSOD's for many users here.
I would suggest keeping these on the App level, because many Games/Apps themselves need different tweaked settings to give you a better experience on the laptop and bring out it's true power depending on that Game/App in particular, allowing you to tweak the in-game/app properly. If you set them up Global now, you may want to change them frequently depending on the games and the apps you try later on because for some games/apps some settings will work for others you might want to tweak it down a little to get the best performance, hence would suggest to keep them at the App level.
For games, who show up on Game Optimization list on Nvidia Geforce Experience you can proceed in simply launching a game first, then exiting it and going to your Geforce Experience and simply clicking 'Optimize' it will Optimize your Game Graphics settings of that game as per your Graphics Card to the max and proper way, which is quite good for those who don't want to mess around too much and get less in return, keeping the best performance out.
Under Games Tab on Geforce Experience press the arrow as shown below, add the folder of steam or other repositories under Preferences > Games > Locations,
By trying Nvidia's Game Optimization through Nvidia Geforce Experience, it will give you a heads up in detail of what every setting does in a game and what affect it'll have, hence making you learn more about the 3D side of the settings more, thus when your confident enough you can tweak a lot yourself after trying those out and having an idea overall as shown below,
All of these small green boxes, show what the setting does and what affect it has in game,
Let us know how it all works out for you :), have a blast.
