> Last time I updated my nVidia video drivers, I found I had to create an account with nVidia to get into the configuration options of the driver on my machine.

I see a lot of people with this confusion between the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience.

You do not need to create an account of any kind to use the NVIDIA Driver Control Panel. You never did and hopefully you never will.

GeForce Experience on the other hand you do need an account now, but it's also completely unnecessary (and buggy) software. You don't need it at all unless for some reason you want Shadowplay (recording) or can't be bothered to set game graphics settings yourself and want GFE to 'optimise' the experience for you.