Question about switching vid cards using same drivers

[RShick]

Do I need to use a driver cleaner and reinstall the drivers when switching between cards that would essentially use the same drivers? I'm a bit confused on this issue.

Basically, my system is currently running with a Gainward 5900nu GS. I want to try out my friends 6800GT on my system to see the difference in performance. Do I need to do anything special, or is it as simple as swaping the hardware. We are both using the latest GeForce drivers (61.77).

Thanks for any help.

Ryan

 

[RShick]

anyone have any experience with this?

I would assume that I could power off, swap cards, power on to bios settings, make sure things are identified properly (and change anything that is not accurate), and then boot to windows and run with it. Am I completely off base here?

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: RShick
anyone have any experience with this?

I would assume that I could power off, swap cards, power on to bios settings, make sure things are identified properly (and change anything that is not accurate), and then boot to windows and run with it. Am I completely off base here?

That's what I would do. I.e., I think you'll be OK. Worked for me when I upgraded my 9600pro to a 9800pro.

Fern

 

[RShick]

thanks for the response 🙂

 

[Hauk]

You're gonna have to reinstall 61.77 drivers. Simply swapping cards will result in windows wizard popping up asking for driver location. Only unzipped files in the default c:\nvidia folder that is created when 61.77 exe is run will be "seen" by the wizard.

So before you swap em, either:

1)Run the 61.77 exe again and let files unzip, cancel installation after unzip. Swap cards and point to c:\nvidia directory with wizard.

2)Completly uninstall nvidia drivers, swap cards, cancel out of wizard on startup, and run 61.77exe to install drivers again.


Hope this helps..