The little things people dont know - Upgrade pitfalls

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:19

Hi everyone.
I built a pc almost exactly 5 years ago. It was my first attempt. Thanks to the fantastic help from various people on this forum I put together a great machine for my budget so that I could achieve my dream to play Battlefield3. The help I got was incredible and some kind souls actually helped me in real time as I built the thing and came across those little things that the guides don't mention.

In the end I had this:
-MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB Graphics Card
-Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge)Processor
-MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
-OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply
-Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black
-Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3

The Beast served has me well and performed every bit as well as I'd hoped. I've been able to play everything I wanted to on high graphic settings and it is only in recent times things have started to dip to medium or below - Arkham city was the first, Tomb Raider gave it a slight worry, others here and there (GTA4). Nothing major, still all looked better than my mate's xbox versions. I bought 4Gb RAM so now it is 8.

Then I bought The WItcher 3. Possibly my favourite game of all time, but it's really struggling. On 1080p the old rig is pretty jumpy. Looks lovely but even with most settings down low, it is really hard to avoid the fact that it is time for an upgrade.

So I was going to ask for help but the forum required some sort of quarantine period and one thing led to another and the MSI 970GTX ended up in my basket and then... I just wasn't strong enough.
It arrives tomorrow....

So, what I'm waffling on to get to is, I thought I might have one question still that could be of use to others too.
I am going to download the latest Nvidia driver tonight and save it somewhere. Then I will uninstall the existing Nvidia driver and power down.

To the experienced people out there, is there any little element of the actual physical switching of the cards that I need to be careful about? I'm thinking of those daft things like when you realise you've been yanking your RAM stick too too hard before you notice the little catch? Like the time I spent half an hour carefully screwing my motherboard in to the case only to realise the backplate had to go in first...

WHat do you wish you had known\? What tips do you have? Am I an imbecile asking how to do something with no hidden traps at all?

Cheers all

smogsy · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:22

1. you dont need new drivers unless yours are very old.
2. remember the power connectors for your 970
3. dont forget the latch that holds the GPU in place
4 ( i always forget) unplug your Monitor cables before taking out your gpu

AWPC · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:49

Just be careful make sure you put BOTH PSU connectors into the GTX 970 (they give you a molex to PCI-E adapter in the box usually). I would install the latest Nvidia drivers as they do have some fixes for certain games so go here get the latest install them now so your card tomorrow should be plug n play although you may need to reinstall the NVidia drivers again its hit or miss & varies system to system if it auto detects or not. Also make sure Windows is up to date there was a platform update a few years ago which makes some difference. If you have IE11 installed you will have the platform update. Also make sure your MS dot.net is up to date as Nvidia drivers use that. They will auto update on install but no harm doing now:
http://www.geforce.co.uk/drivers

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:51

Hi Smogsy! Thanks very much for your advice!

I had originally thought that logically, since the drivers seem pretty general, that I could just leave them. But then I read some things that made me think they might modify themselves to some extent to account for the card, like disabling features that card doesn't support. Also I don't remember updating my drivers manually, at least for a long time. So I thought I ought to start again for safety.

I will take the rest of your advice as well. Should be okay with the monitor as I have to move the box a fair way to work on it.

Thanks again!

abdidas · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:56

Swapping GPUs is one of the easiest things to do as long as it's not liquid cooled. Make sure you release the GPU from the PCI-E slot, don't just force it out.

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 19:58

Hi AWPC
Thanks for the advice.
SO can I just update the drivers as they are? No need to uninstall them and start again? Logically for me that would work but I read quite a bit of seemingly contradictory info!

Windows should be up to date. I left my pc on for a while and it forced me to upgrade from 7 to 10 last week so that's probably turned out for the best.

Thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 20:00

Thanks Abdidas
If it turns out I can just update the drivers this could be a lot more straight forward than I had thought.

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 20:34

Have checked the Nvidia website and they advise always uninstalling old drivers before putting a new card in. So even though it doesn't seem logical to me (why cant their software just keep itself up to date?) that's the way I will go,

Thanks for all your help.

abdidas · 18 Apr 2016 at 20:42

Gibbonlord said:
Have checked the Nvidia website and they advise always uninstalling old drivers before putting a new card in. So even though it doesn't seem logical to me (why cant their software just keep itself up to date?) that's the way I will go,

Thanks for all your help.

Leave the old drivers as it, install new GPU then install latest drivers for your new GPU. It's shouldn't be that complicated, make sure you select custom then clean installation during driver install.

Calo · 18 Apr 2016 at 20:57

Remember to peel off all the protective plastic coverings if the new card has any - especially check the disks on top of the fans, i missed them and im sure it made a bad smell before i removed them!

Hey, im interested to know if you new 970 gets a burn in smell for the first day or two you use it... lets us know.

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:01

Thanks Calo. Good thinking! That's exactly the sort of thing I would do.

I'm hoping for no scary burning smells but I will let you know if there s one!

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:05

Abdidas - That's what I was hoping to do but there are many people saying that fully uninstalling the existing driver and installing the new one is necessary for reasons I don't fully understand, and then when I saw the actual Nvidia site say the same thing I thought I had better go with that.

Maybe I will try it your way first. I suppose there is nothing stopping a full replacement of drivers if I face a problem later on.

Ian Evey · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:06

If it does not boot with the new card ( black screen usually ) then you may need the latest motherboard bios if you have not already

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:13

Ian Evey - Hmm that sounds scary. Do you think that is a likely problem?

pgi947 · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:20

smogsy said:
1. you dont need new drivers unless yours are very old.
2. remember the power connectors for your 970
3. dont forget the latch that holds the GPU in place
4 ( i always forget) unplug your Monitor cables before taking out your gpu

I've done number 4 at least 3 times, the last was the worst, drained loop, disconnected all wc fittings and power, then spent 15mins stumped as to why it wouldn't come out

Gibbonlord · 18 Apr 2016 at 21:37

@pgi947 - I will do my best to remember that. I always do something wrong!

AWPC · 18 Apr 2016 at 22:48

Gibbonlord said:
Hi AWPC
Thanks for the advice.
SO can I just update the drivers as they are? No need to uninstall them and start again? Logically for me that would work but I read quite a bit of seemingly contradictory info!

Windows should be up to date. I left my pc on for a while and it forced me to upgrade from 7 to 10 last week so that's probably turned out for the best.

Thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

Win 10 should be up to date then so leave them alone for now.

pgi947 · 18 Apr 2016 at 23:49

Gibbonlord said:
@pgi947 - I will do my best to remember that. I always do something wrong!

Everyone's entitled to a brain fart every now and then

ukxenon · 19 Apr 2016 at 06:32

It is easy you will be surprised post back how it we t we. Your done

Confused Stu · 19 Apr 2016 at 07:45

smogsy said:
1. you dont need new drivers unless yours are very old.
2. remember the power connectors for your 970
3. dont forget the latch that holds the GPU in place
4 ( i always forget) unplug your Monitor cables before taking out your gpu

Chalk up another victim of number 4. At least 3 times that I remember! I also found the PCI-E latch was much easier to deal with on my old P8P67 after I'd forgotten about it for the last time and it broke off.