Somewhere I read that AMD wants you to uninstall the old drivers first. How many of you guys actually uninstall the old drivers first

Meh I never do unless I am changing vendors. Most the time is do change vendors I reinstall windows anyways.
 
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only time i've ever done it is when changing motherboards, i'll uninstall the chipset drivers before shutting down. otherwise i don't bother with it.
 
Doesn't that collapse all the icons into one lump on your desktop (when you boot without drivers and get VGA-something resolution)?
 
uOpt said:
Doesn't that collapse all the icons into one lump on your desktop (when you boot without drivers and get VGA-something resolution
Click to expand...

I just did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro, disconnected from the internet. My first bootup, remember no drivers installed, screen resolution was the normal 1920 x 1080.
 
I've never removed any old drivers since the W7-8 era, mainly because I have software that tells me what drivers are needed, and shows me a record of their version numbers and when the last update was issues, and also identifies any that are not needed and let's me delete them all with just a few clicks...

And when Windows.AI (cough*12*cough) comes out, the ghost in the machine will hopefully take care of this for us :D
 
dogDAbone said:
I have software that tells me what drivers are needed, and shows me a record of their version numbers and when the last update was issues, and also identifies any that are not needed and let's me delete them all with just a few clicks...
Click to expand...

What software?
dogDAbone said:
And when Windows.AI (cough*12*cough) comes out, the ghost in the machine will hopefully take care of this for us :D
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I'm not exactly holding my breath. It is going to take MS at least a year and multiple patches and hot fixes before Win 12 is useable and reasonably trouble-free. My prediction. You heard it here first.
 
philb2 said:
What software?
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DriverBoosterPro/Advanced System CarePro
philb2 said:
I'm not exactly holding my breath. It is going to take MS at least a year and multiple patches and hot fixes before Win 12 is useable and reasonably trouble-free. My prediction. You heard it here first.
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Perhaps, but even that will be progress, when compared to the proprietary, bloated, crash-happy shitshow we have now :)
 
Dan_D said:
I only do so when I'm switching between NVIDIA and AMD. If I'm updating to a newer version of the same vendor's driver, I don't bother.
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I also do this. I always thought the installer itself removed the old drivers completely.
 
The AMD Installer does automatically uninstall the old driver first.
 
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I'm surprised no one mentioned DDU in this thread. This is the proper way to uninstall graphics drivers. The only time it's necessary is when you're switching between GPU vendors (like from AMD to Nvidia/Intel or vice versa).

I'm not aware of AMD ever providing statements that say you must uninstall the old drivers before upgrading to the new drivers. This goes for any AMD driver (chipset, graphics, whatever).
 
mothman said:
The AMD Installer does automatically uninstalls the old driver first.
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So does nvidia if you tick the clean install box. If not it will save your settings and keep some backup files of the old drivers (for what I don't know). On an old Win 7 install I had literally gigabyte of leftovers from updating nvidia drivers that way for years. That machine had no issues though, perfectly stable and all. Was just a waste of disk space so I tick the box now, I just wrote down the few settings I do change and put them back on.

Ever since Windows 7 I stopped uninstalling drivers of any type when updating, I just overwrite old ones. For most of them you don't even need a reboot anymore, that includes video drivers funny enough. And you can downgrade drivers the same way too (I've done it a lot when new ones introduced a regression I didn't like). At least that works totally fine with nvidia, never tested with AMD.

But yes of course I'd still recommend uninstalling and/or a fresh Windows install when switching vendor, definitely. I suspect that it's not critical with GPU drivers though but I wouldn't risk it with a CPU vendor change that's for sure. For the latter I just reinstall Windows.
 
dogDAbone said:
And when Windows.AI (cough*12*cough) comes out, the ghost in the machine will hopefully take care of this for us :D
Click to expand...
Perhaps the beneficent Killer Feature™ that will allow us all to accept AI is the side effect of self preservation, when AI-fueled PCs fight off bad drivers, etc., to avoid BSODs.

One can dream.... (You know, 'cause it's like the Matrix, 'n' such.)

On Topic: rarely uninstall old stuff, except when I've had a problem. (I do check the box, when offered, to do a clean install, however.)

-bZj
 
I went from an RTX 2060 (had it for a few years) to an RX 6750 XT for I dunno 6 months before I reinstalled windows. I never did anything besides swapping cards and installing new drivers. I never had an issue. (only issue I had was from bunk ram).
My AMD 3800X and 5600X on my MSI Mobo, Same thing with Mobo drivers. I just run the installer and there we go.

The last few years AMD drivers have been great to me.
 
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