Are Nvidia Graphics Drivers all the Same?

[box o rocks]

My neighbor has a GTX 970 that he moved to another machine. He bought himself a GTX 1060 to replace it. Does he have to uninstall the old GTX 970 driver and install the new GTX 1060 driver? We downloaded both drivers for both cards and they appear to be the same file. Is it possible that the driver is universal and adjusts itself depending on the card it sees?

 

[junkeymonkey]

'' Is it possible that the driver is universal and adjusts itself depending on the card it sees? ''

no but yes and that's how I see it ? I prefer to do a clean install if the driver need to unpack anything for a 900 card that's not needed for a 10 series ? it just one of them better safe then sorry thing for me and then I know the driver detected the right card and installed all for it ?

in the end it s better to do a fresh clean driver install when changing unlike hardware

 

[BadBoyGreek]

Usually it asks you to specify your product and OS version during the download. Just download the latest 1060 driver and it should update the existing drivers; no need to uninstall first, though recommended to clean install.

 

[junkeymonkey]

never auto update get the driver you want uninstall your old driver and then install the new driver that auto updating has screwed a lot of folks over

do it manually and do it right

I like to all ways review the release notes to see if anything changed for the better or worse or any changes that may be needed to know over the older drivers I used

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/372.70/372.70-win10-win8-win7-desktop-release-notes.pdf

just because its a newer / latest driver don't mean its a better driver

 

[box o rocks]

never auto update get the driver you want uninstall your old driver and then install the new driver that auto updating has screwed a lot of folks over

do it manually and do it right

I like to all ways review the release notes to see if anything changed for the better or worse or any changes that may be needed to know over the older drivers I used

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/372.70/372.70-win10-win8-win7-desktop-release-notes.pdf

just because its a newer / latest driver don't mean its a better driver

Dang! Lots of reading there!
But on page 28 it says the driver in question supports both the 1060 and the 970. Wouldn't that indicate that the same installed driver will work with both cards?

 

[junkeymonkey]

ya but I think its just like you said here '' Is it possible that the driver is universal and adjusts itself depending on the card it sees''

when the installer recognizes what card you got it unpacks and install for that card used [notice how the first thing it does is check/scan system before the install ] .. bottom line id do a fresh clean driver install and then that worry is over , right ?? then you know the driver is in and correctly configured to the card used

 

[box o rocks]

OK. No sense taking chances. He did a clean install of the correct driver.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I just swapped card out but just for a quick test or something but to be use full time fresh clean install .. like you said you know it right that way