Updating Nvidea driver?
IceDragonArt
Posts: 12,548
So I have windows 7 (on a newer pc, its just a little over a year old) and a Nvidea card. I have been putting off the updates to the driver because I have been seeing people have all kinds of problems with the updates especially in regards to Daz Studio. I am still having issues with kernal exceptions that are shutting down Studio mid render. My question is, if I upgrade the driver will it help my kernal exception problems and is it likely to totally screw up my Daz Studio in any way shape or form? and if it does screw it up how hard is to fix it and what does that involve?
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In Windows you can make a restore point. Use the search, or open Control Panel and type in 'Create Restore Point'. When you create it, ensure you name it something you'll remember as Windows likes to use a date and numbers. If/when the driver update really screws up your system, you can use the Restore Point tool to go back to that point. It will uninstall the new driver(s) and re-install the older ones. I make a restore point every time I do something to my system, it's cheap insurance and has saved my butt many times. It's also helpful to only install the actual driver. NVidia (like everyone else) loves to install 'helpers' that really aren't very helpful and only seem to get in the way.
I'm not sure if it'll help or not, hard to say. There is a problem with the Iray version in the beta that causes problems when used on some AMD CPUs. If you fall into that configuration, there probably isn't any benefit.
When the RC2 Beta was released a week or two ago with 2016.2 Iray, I followed NVIDIA's recommendations and upgraded to 372.90 as that met the minimum, 368 or newer, needed for the new Iray and matched their recommendation of using version 372 of their driver. 376, or close to that, was what was actually available on NVIDIA's driver update site.
I was using a version of the driver too old to support the new Iray release, so I needed to upgrade if I wanted to test. 372.90 has been working fine for me and the pre-368.NN was working also. I don't install "GE Experience" though as that has been more of a hassle that a benefit for me.
Thank you!
Okay what did you upgrade? Sorry I have no idea what 372.90 is? And is that something that you have to pay for? Also how would I find out if fall into that particular configuration and what would I do to fix it?
The driver updates from NVIDIA are free. I always get mine here: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
Filling in the form and clicking search will get you to the most recently released drivers which are currently version 375.70 for Windows 7 64 Bit.
If you want older or beta drivers, click on the Beta and Older Drivers link below the form and fill in that form.
Once you've downloaded the current, older or beta driver, run the executable to install.
As I said, I do a custom install, an option in the installer, and don't install the GE Experience program.
GE Experience is supposed to help you keep your drivers up to date and provide optimized settings for games and other applications. I don't like automatic updates and I found the settings it applied to games didn't work well for me, so I stopped installing GE Experience.
Okay thanks. I don't allow anything to auto update on my machines. Ever. Hence my refusal to switch to Windows 10 lol
Okay I've set a restore point, updated the drivers minus the Experience thing. Will see how it goes lol.
There is also an option typically to perform a clean install of the nvidia drivers, and you can select the custom option to allow you to selectively install only some of the bundled drivers. For example maybe you don't need the 3D vision drivers, or the audio driver, or the experience, etc. I usually install some, but not all of the package.
And of course you can save your installer so if the next one you install later fails, you can uninstall it and reinstall this one (provided this one works for you).
Okay, so I got the newest driver installed (and skipped the experience one) and ran the render that caused the last kernel exception. It finished in half the time with no issues whatsoever. So fingers crossed this fixed the problem and didn't cause any new ones. Everything seems to be working well. Thanks so much everyone for the help!
If it's going well?......make a restore point before you do anything else. I'll sometimes forget this step and am left without a decent point to restore back to.
You're welcome, have fun rendering,
.