Going from 5850 to 7950. Any driver changes?

[Piano Man]

So I'm going to be installing my new Sapphire 7950 when I get home. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202006

I'm coming from a ASUS AMD 5850 (stock).

Do I need to do anything with the drivers, or can I do a simple power off, swap, power on?

 

[badb0y]

Uninstall the drivers and install the latest drivers.

 

[SlowSpyder]

When I went from 5870 CF to a 7970 I had to reinstall Windows. You will hopefully have better luck. Uninstall the drivers with the 5850, power down, swap your card out for the 7950, boot up, install new drivers. Hopefully it is smooth sailing for you.

 

[Silverforce11]

Do a clean uninstall of drivers, use some software to remove everything like driver sweeper etc.. then reboot back into windows in safe mode so it wont auto install video drivers. THEN shutdown and switch cards. Otherwise windows misbehaves, from my personal experience.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Do a clean uninstall of drivers, use some software to remove everything like driver sweeper etc.. then reboot back into windows in safe mode so it wont auto install video drivers. THEN shutdown and switch cards. Otherwise windows misbehaves, from my personal experience.

OP, if you go this route maybe you'll have better luck than I did.

 

[Sunny129]

So I'm going to be installing my new Sapphire 7950 when I get home. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202006

I'm coming from a ASUS AMD 5850 (stock).

Do I need to do anything with the drivers, or can I do a simple power off, swap, power on?

it depends...are you the type to update to the latest drivers everytime a new WQHL release comes out? or have you been using the same drivers ever since you started using the 5850? if you're already running the latest Catalyst drivers, a simple hardware swap should do it.

 

[tweakboy]

When I went from 5870 CF to a 7970 I had to reinstall Windows. You will hopefully have better luck. Uninstall the drivers with the 5850, power down, swap your card out for the 7950, boot up, install new drivers. Hopefully it is smooth sailing for you.

Usually if your going from nvidia to ATI or ATI to nvidia you need to format and install OS again, because it gives problems with drivers,, BSODs crashes slowness etc.

I would urge you to uninstall drivers from safe mode and shut off pc and put in your new 7850 and install the latest 12.11 drivers and off you go. You will see a difference in performance, especially if you use AA and what not. gl

 

[SunnyD]

Usually if your going from nvidia to ATI or ATI to nvidia you need to format and install OS again, because it gives problems with drivers,, BSODs crashes slowness etc.

I would urge you to uninstall drivers from safe mode and shut off pc and put in your new 7850 and install the latest 12.11 drivers and off you go. You will see a difference in performance, especially if you use AA and what not. gl

Totally full of shit. Uninstall original driver before removing original card, shut down, remove card, put in new card, install drivers for new card, carry on like nothing has happened.

OP, technically you shouldn't NEED to reinstall the drivers, but I would anyway, especially if you don't update to the latest released drivers on a regular basis. Same process as I just outlined, just to be safe.

Most people would go one step further and recommend rebooting into safemode before uninstalling drivers, and then running a driver cleaner prior to installing new drivers. Personally, I've never had any issues that required a safemode uninstall since Windows XP pre-Service Pack 1 days.

 

[Gillbot]

Totally full of shit. Uninstall original driver before removing original card, shut down, remove card, put in new card, install drivers for new card, carry on like nothing has happened.

OP, technically you shouldn't NEED to reinstall the drivers, but I would anyway, especially if you don't update to the latest released drivers on a regular basis. Same process as I just outlined, just to be safe.

Most people would go one step further and recommend rebooting into safemode before uninstalling drivers, and then running a driver cleaner prior to installing new drivers. Personally, I've never had any issues that required a safemode uninstall since Windows XP pre-Service Pack 1 days.

I don't even go that far, I just pop in the new card and install the new drivers on 1st boot.

 

[Piano Man]

Ok, I'll go the boot into safe mode, uninstall drivers (I think I have 12.09 perhaps), power down, drop in new card, boot into normal mode, install new drivers (12.11 Beta).

 

[Zorander]

I did a similar switch to my HTP (6850 -> 5850). Windows 7 detected the 'new hardware', switched the resolution to standard VGA and re-installed the drivers using the then existing Catalyst version in the system folder. While it did not work out as simple as a RAM swap, it was as automatic as it could be and took only a few extra seconds.

 

[Plimogz]

I very recently went from a 6950 to a 7950 while running the 12.7s (or 12.9s, whatever). I just powered down my PC, swapped cards and was good to go 2 or 3 reboots later -- or 1.5 minutes, as it's known in SSD-land. IIRC the 3rd reboot was just to satisfy Afterburner which recommended an additional reboot for sensors or something

Quite painless.

 

[SolMiester]

AMD have the latest driver for both 5xxx and 7xxx as 12.10 (the same driver package), therefore by rights all you have to do is use DEVICE MANAGER to uninstall the card, shutdown, swap hardware and when you boot up windows will apply the same drivers to the new card....

 

[tweakboy]

it depends...are you the type to update to the latest drivers everytime a new WQHL release comes out? or have you been using the same drivers ever since you started using the 5850? if you're already running the latest Catalyst drivers, a simple hardware swap should do it.

Nice 6 cores SunnyD :thumbsup: