Question ? regarding uninstalling graphics

[ganfax]

I'm upgrading from my graphics board from nvidia gtx 970 to nvidia gtx 1070. Since i'm staying with nvidia do I still need to uninstall the graphics drivers before installing the gtx 1070?

 

[Gmoney06ss]

I would, and did. Was recommended to me on here.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

It is best to use display driver uninstaller first. It should work without this but you could run into problems if you dont.

 

[dragola901]

Try without uninstalling and see what happens, if the performance is lacking or there are issues then just re-install the driver. Worse case windows will use a generic/grab a driver until you update it manually. I would recommend just uninstalling so that everything is properly set and updated for the new card.

 

[Solandri]

Yes, uninstall with DDU first.

The reason Nvidia and AMD are able to put out unified drivers which work with a large range of GPUs, is because the driver installer detects the hardware and tweaks the settings to best use the hardware. If an older GPU is missing certain hardware, the driver will be configured to emulate that hardware in software. Slower, but it prevents the driver from crashing if the game tries to use that hardware.

If you don't reinstall, your 1070 will end up using drivers configured for a 970. And any new hardware accelerated features of your 1070 may end up being unused. The drivers will instead needlessly and wastefully emulate those features in software, because the drivers think you still have a 970 which doesn't support those function in hardware.