from 7600gt to 8800gt; any config necessary?

[gamblor01]

Hey folks. A few days ago I realized my video card is going out on my. All DirectX apps cause the machine to become unstable, artifacts have started appearing on the screen, and yet none of my temps are very high (my GPU was at 55 Celsius, everything else around 40C). So I have ordered an 8800GT and it is en route right now.

I'm currently running Ubuntu and I have the nvidia-glx-new package installed. Since they are both nvidia cards, do I need to do anything when I get the new card? I just wonder if I should uninstall the nvidia-glx-new package and then reinstall it once I put the new card in. I'm also curious if I need to make any changes to config files (i.e. xorg.conf) or anything of that nature once the new card is installed.

Or perhaps I can shutdown, swap out the cards, reboot, and be done with it. Does anyone know?

[ph34r]

Shutdown, swap cards, power on. You'll be good to go.

[bwkaz]

On Windows (since you mentioned DX), you'll have to deal with the crappy "uninstall drivers, shut down, replace card, power up, reinstall drivers" stupidity -- at least if you want to follow the manufacturers' recommendations. The docs that are included with all the video cards that I've ever seen insist that this is all required.

But on Linux, no. I've just replaced a 6800GT (AGP) with a 9800GTX (PCIe), and there was no reconfiguration necessary at all: just drop the hardware in. (My motherboard already has both slots.) As long as you're using an nvidia driver version that supports your newer card model, it'll work fine. If not, you'll just have to install a version that does, but most of the recent drivers have supported the 8800s IIRC.

Of course, I'm not using a distro package for those drivers, so maybe it's different on Ubuntu. But I doubt it. :)

[gamblor01]

Thanks. I assumed it was the case that no config was necessary but I just wanted to be sure.

bwkaz -- DirectX runs on Linux too...via wine ;) Actually the only DirectX app I really use is Team Fortress 2. When I first started having problems I assumed it was my recent upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04. I did reboot into XP to try TF2, the Crysis demo and Command and Conquer. All of them locked up in the same way TF2 was locking up in Linux. Once I started noticing artifacts I knew I had a video card problem.

I'm hoping the 8800GT will make TF2 run even better under Wine. Let's face it though, it ran better under Windows (about 50-60fps solid). I got about 30fps with the 7600GT, but I had to run at DirectX 8.1 instead of DirectX 9, and it will briefly drop to 9 FPS on a very frequent basis (like once exactly every 3 seconds). It was only briefly but it was just enough to notice. I try to avoid Windows as much as possible so hopefully this little drop will no longer be an issue.