I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but in the Quake/Quack incident the texture quality and mip levels* were different than the user-specified values when running a different named program. This was producing obvious visual artifacts, and I consider this cheating.
If I specify "16x Anisotropic filtering" and the driver changes that to "4x" or some other number behind the scenes, that's an unacceptable optimization.
The current "GeForce Experience" program that selects optimal settings for the current card is an acceptable optimization, I can see which settings are configured and change them if I like.
[*] I don't remember the specific things they were adjusting.
If I specify "16x Anisotropic filtering" and the driver changes that to "4x" or some other number behind the scenes, that's an unacceptable optimization.
The current "GeForce Experience" program that selects optimal settings for the current card is an acceptable optimization, I can see which settings are configured and change them if I like.
[*] I don't remember the specific things they were adjusting.