nVidia Drivers and Graphics Card Upgrade

[Dim Reaper]

I was hoping that someone here could give me some advice on the best way to go about a graphics card update whilst keeping ED and the Rift running at their best.

I am currently running a GTX 980ti with the 388.43 drivers. I haven't updated to newer drivers because everything is running fine with these. Tomorrow I am getting a 1080ti delivered, so the question is, what would be the best way to go about the upgrade:

A) Removing the nvidia drivers, swapping for the new card and reinstalling 388.43.
B) Removing the nvidia drivers, swapping for the new card and installing the latest nVidia drivers.
C) Swap the cards and leave the drivers alone.
D) Something else?

Anyone who has had experience of this, I would greatly appreciate any advice.

 

[Hexcaliber]

Options A or B should work just fine. I would go with installing the latest drivers to ensure any recent fixes and tweaks aimed specifically at the 1080TI are included.

 

[Dim Reaper]

Options A or B should work just fine. I would go with installing the latest drivers to ensure any recent fixes and tweaks aimed specifically at the 1080TI are included.

Thank you, I'll go with your advice.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

C should also work.
Can always fun ddu cleaner if you have issues, and reinstalling.

I honestly don't see a reason to be up to date on you drivers either, even though I am at the moment.

 

[Dim Reaper]

C should also work.
Can always fun ddu cleaner if you have issues, and reinstalling.

I honestly don't see a reason to be up to date on you drivers either, even though I am at the moment.

Thanks for the input. I think that I'm going to uninstall the drivers, swap the cards and then reinstall 388.43 and see how the performance is. I prefer to stay a little behind on gfx card drivers where possible. From your answer though, I am going to download DDU cleaner so that I have it ready if needed.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

No point in just uninstalling the driver.
If it is to have any point to remove you need to run the DDU cleaner.
It even has a quick option. for swapping gpu .
Should reboot you to safe mode, uninstall drivers and power off so you can swap cards.

If you don't use DDU you might as well not bother removing it before swapping.

 

[Dim Reaper]

No point in just uninstalling the driver.
If it is to have any point to remove you need to run the DDU cleaner.
It even has a quick option. for swapping gpu .
Should reboot you to safe mode, uninstall drivers and power off so you can swap cards.

If you don't use DDU you might as well not bother removing it before swapping.

That is good to know and very helpful. Thank you.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Yeah a normal uninstall leaves a lot of old settings, files, and registry keys behind.
DDU simply clears all of it out.

But seriously I myself upgraded from 980ti to 1080ti and I didn't do anything with drivers at all.
I did have to reformat windows a month or so later, but that was because of a botched feature update.

 

[dburne]

Whenever changing out cards, I always remove the drivers using DDU first.
Shut the computer down and change video cards.
Install latest Nvidia drivers after booting back up with new card.
I only install the drivers and PhysX, I do not install GeForce Experience or any of that other stuff.

Not sure it is really necessary, but I just prefer to do it this way when changing cards. Always seems to work well for me.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Whenever changing out cards, I always remove the drivers using DDU first.
Shut the computer down and change video cards.
Install latest Nvidia drivers after booting back up with new card.
I only install the drivers and PhysX, I do not install GeForce Experience or any of that other stuff.

Not sure it is really necessary, but I just prefer to do it this way when changing cards. Always seems to work well for me.

I would also recommend this method as the best option and by all means what I would ideally recommend to do for op.

I'm mostly just saying, from having swapped out hardware between other machines where I couldn't have been bothered to do it optimally, as long as both pieces of hardware has support in the driver you are pretty much good to go.

And also extra point shared.
Leave the geforce experience out, it no longer has much of any benefit.

 

[Dim Reaper]

Thank you to everyone for their input.

Since it was worth a try, I tried a straight swap of the cards first. Windows used the default drivers. I uninstalled 388.43, rebooted and re-installed 388.43 and everything is working fine. Only problem that I had is that I use a 42" TV as my main monitor and have previously connected the VGA port on the TV to the DVI port on the 980ti via an adaptor. The DVI port on the 1080ti is different. Luckily I had a Displayport to HDMI adaptor that I've been able to use. I've tried out ED on my old VR settings and it was great to get that consistent 90fps. Now to try upping the settings for the new card.

 

[CMDR Minion Blob]

On my system the 1080ti works sufficiently with all settings maxed out at 1.5x HMD+1.0 SS virtually all ED environments with the exception of settlement landings and/or asteroid fields. To tackle those to anywhere close to 90fps consistently seems out of reach with this GPU architecture at least with an i7-4700 NVMe SSD and GB fiber Internet connection.

Hopefully the next upgrade will close the gap with the CV1 baseline before the next generation VR platforms raise the bar all over again with enhanced resolution and faster I/O.