I recently upgraded from an RTX 3060 Ti to an RTX 4070 Super and ran into a major driver-related mess. Before installing the new card, I updated to the latest NVIDIA driver and selected the clean-install option in the NVIDIA app. After swapping the GPU, I installed the same driver again using clean installation, and everything seemed fine for about an hour.
The trouble started when I tried to re-enable G-Sync and reinstalled NVIDIA Control Panel through the Microsoft Store. Windows then became extremely sluggish, the GPU drew only around 60–70 watts, the fans stayed at 0 RPM, and launching a game caused a freeze, crash, and BSOD.
I eventually used DDU in Safe Mode, but I made things worse initially by forgetting to download the replacement driver first. After Windows automatically installed its own driver, the desktop became nearly unusable. I repeated the process correctly with the NVIDIA driver already downloaded, and everything has worked normally since.
Is it generally safe to keep the existing NVIDIA drivers when upgrading to another NVIDIA GPU, or is a thorough removal with DDU recommended? Could the jump from Ampere to Ada Lovelace have caused compatibility issues, or was this more likely Windows or leftover driver software?
3 Answers
The driver package usually supports multiple generations of NVIDIA cards, so changing from a 3060 Ti to a 4070 Super normally does not require DDU. A regular driver reinstall is often enough. The bigger issue may have been Windows automatically installing or replacing the display driver while the system was online. Disabling automatic driver installation through Group Policy or another Windows setting can help during a clean reinstall.
The 40-series is not so different that an existing, current NVIDIA driver should fail just because the GPU was replaced. If the driver was already updated before installing the new card, the upgrade should normally be plug-and-play. DDU is useful for troubleshooting corrupted installations, repeated crashes, or switching between AMD and NVIDIA, but it is not mandatory for every same-vendor upgrade.
The driver was current before I installed the 4070 Super, so I suspect some leftover files, cached settings, or an interaction with the NVIDIA Control Panel installation caused the problem. The NVIDIA app’s clean installation may not have been as thorough as I assumed.
Several people upgrade between NVIDIA cards without using DDU at all. Reinstalling the latest driver after the hardware swap is often sufficient, and sometimes reinstalling it before or after the swap works equally well. Your symptoms sound more like a corrupted or conflicting installation than a normal limitation between Ampere and Ada. If everything is stable now, there is no need to keep removing drivers unnecessarily.
I’ve gone from a 3050 to a 4070 Super and later to a 4070 Ti Super without using DDU, just reinstalling the NVIDIA driver each time. It may simply be that some systems are more sensitive to Windows driver updates or old configuration files.
That may have been part of it. I relied on the NVIDIA app's clean-install option, but Windows may still have interfered after the reboot. I’ll disable automatic driver replacement for future upgrades.