Do u need to uninstall drivers with a new gpu?

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msproject251

msproject251

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I've always known that you should re-install drivers when you have a new graphics card but my friend who is a semi-expert says you don't. What's the right answer?
 
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Barty1884
If it's from the same brand (Nvidia or AMD), it may 'work' plug & play, but certainly won't be optimized and known crashes & driver conflicts have occurred.

You really should uninstall drivers, change out your GPU and then reinstall for optimal results.
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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If it's from the same brand (Nvidia or AMD), it may 'work' plug & play, but certainly won't be optimized and known crashes & driver conflicts have occurred.

You really should uninstall drivers, change out your GPU and then reinstall for optimal results.
 
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MrNiemo

MrNiemo

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Every time new video drivers come out I run DDU (http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html) in safe mode before installing. Display drivers are delicate, very slight installation issues can cause you problems you don't want or need.
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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No, uninstalling old drivers is not necessary, even when switching brands or GPU architecture, as Windows will see a new piece of hardware and treat it accordingly, rather than using the old driver to run the new hardware, unless of course the old driver contains support for the new hardware as well.

Windows treats GPU driver installation pretty much the same as any other piece of equipment, but due to how many common pieces of software such as web browsers and video players hook into the video software subsystem, it's easy to have a failure of video card driver updates, leading people to think that the installers are just not as well written for those. Uninstalling the branded, hardware specific drivers and forcing Windows to use it's generic drivers that don't support certain feature sets can alleviate problems in some cases, leading people again to believe the driver installer was the issue, when it could very well be extra software on their system that was conflicting with driver installation.

A case against wiping the old drivers would be if you have a lot of custom profiles for games you play. If you're upgrading cards from a compatible line of GPUs, you should be able to keep your custom game profiles for your graphics driver while just updating the driver. On the other hand, if you don't want to keep any custom settings, modern GPU drivers should present you with the option to perform clean installs as well, making pointless any uninstallation requirements within the same brand.

The only time I would strongly suggest uninstalling the old graphics driver first would be when switching brands between NVIDIA and AMD, and not because the first should evoke major issues in the second, but for the reason that there can be extra, unnecessary software that is installed as part of a graphics driver package, and there's no point keeping the old software around for a piece of hardware that's no longer attached to the system.
 
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msproject251

msproject251

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That's what I was thinking a lot of things have changed since windows 10.
 
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Even though Windows will detect a new piece of hardware (and that's if you get that far), that doesn't mean the remnants of a prior GPU install won't cause issues at times (and it has!).

In theory, Geforce experience etc should be able to handle a GPU upgrade seamlessly, if both cards can use the same drivers - in practice, it may app[ear all is well until you run a game etc, then conflicts can appear and are pretty common following upgrades without driver removal.

It's been tested by a couple of people on here, where a GPU upgrade, with the latest driver already installed (say 980ti to 1080) results in lower benchmark scores and lower FPS. When they remove the 'old' driver fully (along with programs etc corresponding to) and reinstall the exact same driver - results improve. Might not be monumental improvements, but even when it's the same driver an no crashes/conflicts are obvious, a clean install has improvements results.

In some instances (albeit rare these days), a new GPU may cause a system to not even boot to the OS. Windows 10 has alleviated most of this, but the problem has not gone away fully.

With nVidia to AMD (or vice versa), it can be much more problematic & not as simple as "no sense keeping unnecessary software installed".
AMD drivers have, on occassion caused nVidia GPUs to fail to be detected (I assume vice-versa could potentially be the case also) - so even installing the appropriate driver on top of the 'other brand' would be impossible in that situation.
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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Not as much has changed as people may be led to believe. Windows 10 is just an over glorified update to Windows 8.1.

The driver situation really hasn't changed a whole lot, but it's nice that manufacturers have added the clean install option. In fact, you can happily run both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs in the same system.

If your old driver supports your new hardware, the reasons to install a newer driver are for the improvements brought by the new driver. Sometimes these include new features being added, bug fixes, performance gains for specific game titles, or general performance gains, and changes to the way the hardware runs in the case graphics cards had undesirable behavior that needs adjustment (fan or power profiles.)
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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While I don't doubt there is anecdotal evidence here, I would be highly suspicious of other software being involved. It could also be that there are slightly different software installs, even by the same driver version, based on the hardware present during installation of the driver. I've even seen things like MSI afterburner or FRAPS cause frame rate issues, so for all we know, the measurements could have been inconsistent.

If the results weren't duplicated by the testers and reproducible by others, I would take them with a great deal of salt.
 
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Oh absolutely BPD - I'm not stating that as definitive 'fact' as (to the best of my knowledge at least) it hasn't been conclusively tested/confirmed.
From what I gathered though (I wish I could find the thread where it was discussed briefly) the potential variables (recording software etc) were kept consistent, with only the removal/reinstall of the GPU driver being 'different'.

In the same breath though - taking any 'test' (however basic) with a great deal of salt as ~proof~ that clean installs result in improved performance, the flip side of that would require ignoring the countless threads/issues of display issues following GPU replacements without a clean install - where full display driver removal has rectified the issue(s).
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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The biggest issue being the moving target that is most people's PCs.

Neither AMD nor NVIDIA can guarantee the sort of software landscape their driver installer is going to have to be dealing with. Maybe Microsoft could actually make things easier in this regard, with a special driver installation mode for Windows, something like safe mode, but with full support for installers?

And of course, in the time we've been enjoying going back and forth on the subject, we could have uninstalled and reinstalled graphics drivers so many times, the question loses a lot of it's relevance.

There is also the view that unless you have a good reason not to install drivers fresh, whether a newer version or a new copy of the existing version, with a new piece of hardware, why wouldn't you? Like I mentioned in a previous post, there's nothing that keeps the driver installer from using different software pieces, dependent on the hardware visible to the installer at the time of install. Something like this could easily lead to the frame rate discrepancies being referring to.
 
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