Changing to ATI from NVidia

[thegoonden]

A friend has donated his old HD5870 to me, to replace my slightly worn GTX280.

I have two versions of windows (on my windows machine anyway, which is where the card is going), XP and 7(64).


Assuming that it is not possible to re-install the operating systems (PARTICULARLY not the XP, which is my Studio OS and therefore simply can not be changed on pain of costing my a fortune)..........what steps should I take before/during/after swapping the cards.

I'm quite looking forward to trying this card as I have often been told that my opinion of ATI cards is wrong (I think they idle too hot, boot up with a black screen too often and have terrible windows drivers and non-existent Linux drivers), and nothing pleases the scientist in me more than being proved wrong.........I especially hope the ATI-ists are telling the truth about higher anti-aliasing with less effort...I play a lot of train and racing car sims, AA is essential.


I am assuming that a driver cleaning program is required prior to shutting down and swapping the cards.??????


Thanks for any help.

PS: If you're planning on posting "no, windows really IS as bad as you Linux users think it is, it literally cannot have its hardware changed without a re-install"......keep walking, because it's absolutely NOT going to happen

PPS: Any advice regarding Ubuntu with this card would be gratefully received too, as I do like to maintain a working Linux on all my machines, even the windows ones......you never know when a second OS will save your bacon.

 

[Marine-RX179]

You don't really need driver sweeper/cleeaner for going Nvidia to AMD. I went from my 9800GTX+ to my 5850 on the same Windows 7 64-bit...it was very painless as all I needed to do was manual uninstall the Nvidia drivers under "uninstall a program", shutdown, swap the 9800GTX+ out with the 5850, reboot and then install the AMD drivers.

If it was upgrade from a AMD card, to even another AMD card nevermind a Nvidia card, people might need the driver sweeper at hand...

 

[thegoonden]

Thanks very much.........panic level reduced

 

[Jakus]

If possible removing drivers and software before you pull the card is always the best method but not essential.

 

[BrianB]

Nice friend you have! Linux is third world to me, can't really help you there. Just uninstall the NVIDIA software, then install the AMD card and software.

 

[thegoonden]

Thanks all round chaps, just reporting back that there were no issues at all in the changeover, uninstall NV drivers, shut down, swap cards, start up, install CCC......and.....done

 

[Kaapstad]

You don't really need driver sweeper/cleeaner for going Nvidia to AMD. I went from my 9800GTX+ to my 5850 on the same Windows 7 64-bit...it was very painless as all I needed to do was manual uninstall the Nvidia drivers under "uninstall a program", shutdown, swap the 9800GTX+ out with the 5850, reboot and then install the AMD drivers.

If it was upgrade from a AMD card, to even another AMD card nevermind a Nvidia card, people might need the driver sweeper at hand...

I ran my rig with a pair of HD 7970s today for a while. All I had to do was leave the nvidia drivers on the machine and just install the AMD drivers no problem.

Unfortunately swaping back to nvidia, when I tried to enable sli the nvidia control panel told me to remove the AMD drivers first lol.