video card swap

[deate]

When you replace a video card is it necessary to uninstall drivers first, then install new card? Nvidia 6600 to Nvidia 7600, then do you need to run Envy again?

[DaddyX3]

When you replace a video card is it necessary to uninstall drivers first, then install new card? Nvidia 6600 to Nvidia 7600, then do you need to run Envy again?

Yep! good call deate. I think your right on the money. I would recommend unistalling via:

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sudo envy -t

Then shut down, swap card out, and reboot. Don't panic if you don't get in to X. You might have to run from recovery mode (from GRUB menu for recovery mode) and do a

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and utilize vesa driver and save to xorg.conf file. However, I don't think it will get this extreme and if your using 1.7 you should be fine without having to do much reconfiguring at all. Once your back into your desktop, just open a terminal and do the sudo envy -t thing again but choose to install nvidia drivers. When their done installing just cntrl+alt+backspace to reset X and utilize new drivers

[LeadFingers]

All things being equal...
The 6600 and the 7600 use the same driver,
Since it's the same release of the same distro, you know the kernel is the same, soooo...
All the .lib's will be the same & you're reinstalling the same driver!
The only difference/benefit of reinstalling, is Nvidia Settings will now say 7600.

[DaddyX3]

All things being equal...
The 6600 and the 7600 use the same driver,
Since it's the same release of the same distro, you know the kernel is the same, soooo...
All the .lib's will be the same & you're reinstalling the same driver!
The only difference/benefit of reinstalling, is Nvidia Settings will now say 7600.

I have never tried that before. Sounds really cool if it will work! I thought that the drivers from Nvidia are basically one package with lots of different little packages inside that gets selected and installed during the driver installation process to fit and match your actual hardware. Thats what I get for thinking I guess.

[cowboy]

[DaddyX3]

All things being equal...
The 6600 and the 7600 use the same driver,
Since it's the same release of the same distro, you know the kernel is the same, soooo...
All the .lib's will be the same & you're reinstalling the same driver!
The only difference/benefit of reinstalling, is Nvidia Settings will now say 7600.

I have never tried that before. Sounds really cool if it will work! I thought that the drivers from Nvidia are basically one package with lots of different little packages inside that gets selected and installed during the driver installation process to fit and match your actual hardware. Thats what I get for thinking I guess.

I didn't mean to sound like a a$$, what I meant was that I really didn't know how the processes worked!

[cowboy]

You didn't, mess-en with you brother

[deate]

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't I use ENVY to uninstall the nvidia drivers, as that is what I used to install them? And wouldn't that leave legacy drivers in place, so that when new card is installed, all I have to do is use ENVY again to install drivers?

[cowboy]

I think what LeadFingers is saying. no need to reinstall driver it is already installed, your system should just pick up the different number of the card..when you boot..

[LeadFingers]

OK, here's What I think I know about Envy & Nvidia...

Envy picks one of 3 classes of drivers based on what card it thinks you have.
1) Nvidia-Legacy.... below GeForce 2 or Quadro 2
2) Nvidia-glx........ GeForce 3 & 4, and Quadro 4
3) Nvidia-glx-new... GeForce 6xxx, FX series, and above
before it downloads the driver script
it downloads and updates the latest dev .lib's
Then it downloads the driver script to /usr/share/envy/linux-restricted-modules-x.x.xx.x/nvidia
(after installing the driver, the original downloaded driver script is left here for future use)
(for those on poor dial-up that keeps timing out, DL the driver with FF,
transfer to above address, Envy will see it and install from there, next time you run envy)

The Nvidia driver isn't so much a driver as it is a script
that is a self unpacking Nvidia GUI installer,
that works across ANY nix platform. (pretty neat huh)
To unpack...
You MUST be in the root, with no "X" running, no glx, and need to be connected to the net.
You must also be in "runlevel 3" (which means you can't unpack & run, from "recovery Mode)
If you have used Envy, you prolly noticed all the drivers end with "-pkg1.run",
the different run levels contain software to make the driver compatible with the different nix kernels.
ie... -pkg2.run has all the goodies of -pkg1.run plus a few more kernel mods
Since Envy has already DL & updated all the dev.lib's, it only needs the core,
not the unpacking script or the kernel mods. (that's why we only see -pkg1.run)

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sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run

This opens the Nvidia GUI, asks a few questions,
and essentially goes through the same process as Envy.
If you ran the -pkg1.run, and the kernel mods it needed for your machine were not in the pkg
It would DL & install the ones it needed, from the Nvidia site.

Sounds pretty easy to use doesn't it
Consider this...
Killing ALL glx, Killing "X" keeping your network connections or opening "PPP"
from a root level!
AND if all the .lib dependencies aren't met, it could bork your kernel mod
and your driver still wouldn't work!
Not for the faint of heart, or someone still learning their way around xorg
MUCH easier to play around with Envy & editing your xorg.conf

While DaddyX3 may be correct in that the core contains different drivers for different cards,
They may not. I don't know for sure!
I do know that you can swap-out a higher card in the same driver class, without reinstalling your driver.
Will you boost your card if you do reinstall?
Don't know, never ran "glxgears" before & after, to verify.
Would be interesting to find out though.