Switching from ATI to nVidia, should I reformat?

datap1mp

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
138
Currently running 6950's in CF, just ordered a GTX 690, wondering if I should reformat and start from scratch when the 690 comes in or just driversweep?
 
Whats this fascination people have with driver sweeping and such? It's 2012, not 2000. I've yet to experience a problem just loading things normally after simply uninstalling one companies software and installing the other companies software and card.

I think this is an old school thing and people are simply overdoing it. And formatting? That is WAY over doing it.
 
Whats this fascination people have with driver sweeping and such? It's 2012, not 2000. I've yet to experience a problem just loading things normally after simply uninstalling one companies software and installing the other companies software and card.

I think this is an old school thing and people are simply overdoing it. And formatting? That is WAY over doing it.

Yea I figured it was overkill but I haven't switched video card brands on the same machine in awhile.
 
No need. Like it was mentioned, this isn't the Windows 98 days anymore. Now unless your Windows install is old, you would benefit from a fresh install anyway but just for a video card swap, there is no need.
 
I switched from a 6950 to a GTX 680. Didn't even uninstall the ATI drivers and my scores for the GTX680 were exactly in line with all reviews. I don't recommend it but I wanted to see what would happen and as far as I can tell nothing bad happened.
 
People make a bigger deal about switching brands and even cards than they should when it comes to drivers. I would simply uninstall the ATI drivers and then the ATI card, then install the Nvidia card and then install the Nvidia drivers. Done.
 
I've run into problems several times when upgrading my drivers. CCC would not open after an upgrade until I went into safe mode and used Driver Sweeper to clean everything out.

I agree you don't need to do anything major like reinstalling Windows or anything but you can run into wrinkles every now and then by installing several different drivers over each other and a Driver Sweeper run takes only a few minutes.
 
Jeez.... good think you're not suicidal. Simple question met with some seriously hard responses.

Other than that - I agree - no need to reformat or anything like that.

Enjoy the 690!
 
I just went from a Sapphire 6950 (flashed to 6970) to a Galaxy 680 with no problems (running Windows 7) . I just unstalled the ATI drivers, powered down, switched cards, powered up and installed the latest Nvidia drivers. Went without a hitch.
 
I switched motherboards and processors twice and video cards 3 times and still running my original win7 install from August if 2009.
9800gt, Gtx260, gtx285, hd5850
Q6600, i7 870, i7 2600k
 
nice isn't it?

gawd do I remember the grief back in the day
 
I switched motherboards and processors twice and video cards 3 times and still running my original win7 install from August if 2009.
9800gt, Gtx260, gtx285, hd5850
Q6600, i7 870, i7 2600k

I wish I was that lucky. Switched from a 780G motherboard to this 990FX motherboard and couldnt even boot into Windows. But then I always have shitty luck when it comes to this stuff. I had an Athlon II X3 that wouldnt unlock to a 4th core. Bought a Phenom II X2 555 that would only unlock to a 3 core and I may very well have to worlds only X6 1090 thats not stable at 4 GHz not to mention the first video card in my entire life that wont overclock AT ALL!

God hates me. :(
 
if you dont want your audio to crap all the time i suggest that you delete every amd file with driver sweeper before installing nvidia drivers and the gpu.
 
if you dont want your audio to crap all the time i suggest that you delete every amd file with driver sweeper before installing nvidia drivers and the gpu.

Just switched from AMD to Nvidia on two of my PC's at home and not single issue with the audio simply removing the AMD drivers and installing the Nvidia drivers.
 
The only thing I would suggest is to remove your current drivers BEFORE you take out the old video card. I remember, and this may no longer actually be the case, that some of the drivers sometimes didn't uninstall correctly unless the card was still physically in the machine.

You wont get screwed over or anything if you dont do this, but it may just end up making things a bit easier.

FWIW, my current install of windows was originally on my X58/920 setup and is now on the X79/3930K.
 
The only thing I would suggest is to remove your current drivers BEFORE you take out the old video card. I remember, and this may no longer actually be the case, that some of the drivers sometimes didn't uninstall correctly unless the card was still physically in the machine.

Completely agree with this as I stated in an earlier post.
 
I wish I was that lucky. Switched from a 780G motherboard to this 990FX motherboard and couldnt even boot into Windows. But then I always have shitty luck when it comes to this stuff. I had an Athlon II X3 that wouldnt unlock to a 4th core. Bought a Phenom II X2 555 that would only unlock to a 3 core and I may very well have to worlds only X6 1090 thats not stable at 4 GHz not to mention the first video card in my entire life that wont overclock AT ALL!

God hates me. :(

I had an issue when I went to the first i7, ahci was enabled on the new board and windows would just blue screen and reboot, went into bios and turned it and windows booted up just fine.
 
I had an issue when I went to the first i7, ahci was enabled on the new board and windows would just blue screen and reboot, went into bios and turned it and windows booted up just fine.

Yeah I found this out about 2 minutes after I started reinstalling Win7. :rolleyes:

I never like to wait for shit so when it wouldnt boot up I just said "oh well, no need in researching this any so lets just reinstall."

I didnt mind that much though cause it wouldve bugged the crap out of me not having a clean, fresh install to go along with my beloved new Sabertooth. Being riddled with OCD is a pain sometimes. :D
 
I don't think it has anything to do with drivers .. just uninstall the AMD drivers and when you pull the cards reset your cmos and then install the new card.. i think 99% of the time the DMI data pool will not see the new card unless you reset the cmos.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with drivers .. just uninstall the AMD drivers and when you pull the cards reset your cmos and then install the new card.. i think 99% of the time the DMI data pool will not see the new card unless you reset the cmos.

Absolutely not. This is classic "you're doing it wrong". You do not have to do any such thing.
 
No need. I've never had driver conflicts with both ATI/Nvidia drivers installed. But if you are making a permanent stop at the 690 and won't be going back to your ATI cards then I'd probably uinstall CCC just for safe measure. The drivers itself won't be of any conflict since they won't be loaded.
 
That's a new one for me. I've never heard of anyone resetting the CMOS when installing a new video card. I've never that myself in the last 18 years that I've owned PC's.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with drivers .. just uninstall the AMD drivers and when you pull the cards reset your cmos and then install the new card.. i think 99% of the time the DMI data pool will not see the new card unless you reset the cmos.

Whoa nellie.....:eek:

I have done a bunch of things when changing GPU brands.....but I've never had to go as far as resetting the MB.

Generally, I just would use the CCC uninstaller, remove GPU, place in the nvidia card, and then install the nvidia software of your liking.
Occassionally I'll run drivercleaner.net when changing brands from one to the other, but that's as drastic as I get.:D

Now when I change MBs and CPUs, I do tend to reformat, but I think that's pretty standard stuff, video cards, not so much.:)
 
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I've found that if you sacrifice two chickens when changing video cards, it lessens the chance of driver issues. Your mileage may vary, but it works for me.
 
I find that replacing every chip on the motherboard is sufficient when changing video cards. Some of the chip retain a 'memory' of what the old video card was and can result in severe issues. Additionally, you may wish to discard the hard drive the other card's drivers were installed to, as hard drives also have similar 'memory'.

Or you could just do the slightly more reasonable thing and install the new card and its drivers. The CCC will bitch every time you boot Windows that it can't find an AMD card (thanks, AMD), so you can either just disable that or uninstall the AMD drivers. How many driver conflict atrocities will you encounter when going this route? Zilch.
 
Just switched from AMD to Nvidia on two of my PC's at home and not single issue with the audio simply removing the AMD drivers and installing the Nvidia drivers.

more problems occur when going from nvidia to amd for some reason.
 
I went from a 48701GB to a GTX 680 with no issues what so ever. Just manually uninstalled the driver and installed the new one. I also tested a HD7770 and it too hotswapped too no problem. A well maintained and 100% stable Win7 setup seems to always keep on trucking in my experience.
 
in addition to formatting, you should probably set fire to your whole computer, just to make sure. :D
 
Currently running 6950's in CF, just ordered a GTX 690, wondering if I should reformat and start from scratch when the 690 comes in or just driversweep?

I always reformat when I get new videocards. I upgraded from an HD 5970 to a crossfire HD 7970 setup. Before I reformat I do remove my videodrivers and driversweeper everything and then remove my videocard. Then I replace it with the new videocards and install the drivers. So far so good my games are running fine. Then I get the occasional strange black screen when I start some games. Happens with the same game over and over again. Reformat and everything is fine. Remember reformat in the sense of not using an image file but the whole thing from scratch. Peace of mind :)
 
Considering AMD's drivers have been unified for some time, all you did was restore your machine to exactly the same state it was prior (as far as graphics drivers are concerned), which seems rather unproductive. Assuming, of course, that your drivers were up to date with respect to 7xxx-series support in the first place.
 
I've run into problems several times when upgrading my drivers. CCC would not open after an upgrade until I went into safe mode and used Driver Sweeper to clean everything out.

I agree you don't need to do anything major like reinstalling Windows or anything but you can run into wrinkles every now and then by installing several different drivers over each other and a Driver Sweeper run takes only a few minutes.

How long ago was that?
 
When I had both brands I just installed both sets of drivers and let it that way, never had a single problem. I was running a 6970 for games and two GTS 450's for folding in the same machine.
 
in addition to formatting, you should probably set fire to your whole computer, just to make sure. :D
I know this was a joke, but there are times when, for me, this would be therapeutic.

I'm also one of those people who needs to reinstall Windows every time, which says a bit about me and kinda explains the above sentiment.
 
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