Do I need to redinstall drivers?

[treepop]

Hey guys,

I got a 4870 512 meg at best buy, then saw one on here like 1 day later for a much better deal(yeah I know...impulse buy) with 1gig ram.

so do I need to reinstall drivers if going from 4870 512 to 4870 1gig?

Thanks

[Quailane]

Even when I flash the bios on the same card I have to reinstall the driver. When I first put in my HD4770 instead of my HD4850 I had to reinstall the video driver. Now I can switch between them no problem. The same thing with my nVidia card. I installed the driver once and now it is fine to pop the card in any time. That is one great thing about Vista. I'm pretty sure you will have to reinstall the driver any time you switch with your OS.

However, I don't see how this is an issue. Would spending one minute of time and rebooting your computer really make you think differently of installing the 1GB card?

[BG-0]

It's not that much of a trouble doing, agreed.. Anyhow, just wanted to mention that my system that earlier had a 4850, works now fine with 4670 (temporary card, waiting for GTX260 to arrive, sold the 4850), FPS seems what it should be, etc. (running 9.4)

[treepop]

Even when I flash the bios on the same card I have to reinstall the driver. When I first put in my HD4770 instead of my HD4850 I had to reinstall the video driver. Now I can switch between them no problem. The same thing with my nVidia card. I installed the driver once and now it is fine to pop the card in any time. That is one great thing about Vista. I'm pretty sure you will have to reinstall the driver any time you switch with your OS.

However, I don't see how this is an issue. Would spending one minute of time and rebooting your computer really make you think differently of installing the 1GB card?

do you run the uninstall given to you by ati, turn off, pop in new card, reboot, then run the install again?

or just turn off pop in and run install again. I will probably do the first thing.

[Quailane]

do you run the uninstall given to you by ati, turn off, pop in new card, reboot, then run the install again?

or just turn off pop in and run install again. I will probably do the first thing.

I just turn it off, pop in the new card, and turn it back on, but it's been so long that I don't remember how XP is. You may not even need to reinstall the driver. I know that switching between an ATI and a nVidia card in XP you would need to delete them though. I think Vista sets up a profile for each video card you install and XP just runs whatever driver you have installed.

[BG-0]

I just turn it off, pop in the new card, and turn it back on, but it's been so long that I don't remember how XP is. You may not even need to reinstall the driver. I know that switching between an ATI and a nVidia card in XP you would need to delete them though. I think Vista sets up a profile for each video card you install and XP just runs whatever driver you have installed.

XP is so horrible that you must MANUALLY :eek::eek: turn the driver service and other apps on and off respectively when switching between Ati and nVidia. /sarc-off

Aaanyhow. If you're going to reinstall, then to avoid any possible problems, make yourself a favor and uninstall, shutdown, card change, reinstall. That's propably going to cause a need for a second reboot too, but it isn't year 2000 so it's not gonna take that much of your precious time. However, I still strongly believe that if the driver(/+CCC) installed supports both cards, it's okay to just change cards, it then takes a while after bootup recognizing the new card, and you'll revert to VGA resolution and need to set it yourself to what you want it to be and you're good to go.