Keeping your system device drivers updated has several advantages. Not only they fix critical vulnerabilities in old drivers, but they also enhance system performance and sometimes introduce new features as well.
Graphics card performance is an important aspect, especially for gamers. So it’s important to keep the graphics card driver as up to date as possible. In this article, we are talking about Nvidia drivers.
Nvidia drivers are free. But the drivers are not universal. You need to download the compatible drivers for your graphics card and system. Nvidia updates the drivers regularly. It’s important to keep the drivers updated to the latest versions for best performance and security.
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How to update Nvidia drivers
The best way to update Nvidia drivers is to use the GeForce Experience app. You can download and install it from the following link:
Download GeForce Experience app
This app will keep your Nvidia graphics card drivers always updated. But if you want to download and install the drivers manually, you can follow the steps given in the next section.
But before you proceed to the installation or upgrading your driver, it is always wise to backup your system drivers so that you can revert to the working driver if anything goes wrong. You can restore the backed-up drivers any time you want.
Download latest Nvidia drivers
You can follow the steps below to download the latest Nvidia drivers specifically for your system:
- Go to this link and select the correct data from the drop-down list
- The options include the following:
The product: GeForce, TITAN, Legacy, 3D Vision, ION
The graphics card type: This will vary according to your first choice
The graphics card model: This will vary according to your previous choice
System Architecture: Windows 10 64-bit/32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Linux 64-bit, Solaris x86/x64, FreeBSD x64
Language: English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Deutsch, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, etc.
Windows Driver Type: DCH or Standard. You can check out the driver type in Nvidia control panel. DCH drivers can’t be installed over Standard ones and vice versa.
Driver stability: Recommended/Certified, Beta, Studio Driver
The release notes for the latest version of Nvidia Game Ready driver 436.30 WHQL can be downloaded from here.
How to uninstall Nvidia drivers
Uninstalling the graphics drivers is easy. You can follow the steps below to uninstall Nvidia drivers completely:
- Open Apps and Features (Windows key + X + F)
- Select the NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers from the list of programs.
- Press the Uninstall button to start the uninstallation process
- Confirm with Windows that you wish to continue with the uninstall
You can also completely remove old drivers which are no longer in use.
How to rollback or downgrade Nvidia drivers
If you have not removed the old Nvidia drivers and want to downgrade or rollback to the older version of the driver, you can easily do it using the Windows Device Manager. Just follow the steps below to rollback Nvidia drivers:
- Open Device Manager (Windows key + X + M)
- Right-click the Nvidia driver under Display adapters and go to Properties
- Under the Driver tab, press the “Roll Back Driver” button.
Please note that if there is no old driver available in Windows cache, the Roll Back Driver button will be greyed out.
I hope this guide will help you keep your graphics card drivers up to date at all times.
