Hello all. I’v used the nvidia one-click installer. I’m getting a newer video card. Will the new video card will be detected and drivers installed? Do I need to uninstall all drivers then reinstall ‘one-click’ installer? I need to know what I should do. Thanks.
It should just work
Mine did
I can confirm that when upgrading an nVIDIA video card to a newer nVIDIA video card, supported by the same video driver version, it still works, without the need to reinstall the driver again. If you have a really new video card, it is always possible it requires the very latest driver you have to install and if you are replacing a legacy nVIDIA card with a new one, the older driver might need to be updated as well. But, except for replacing a very old and installing a hot off the presses video card, your existing nVIDIA driver supports a very wide rage of video card models. It should not hurt to pull the old and install the new and see what you get. If the screen is blank, put the old one back in and search on the new video card. I remember for instance way back with the nVIDIA GT 240 came out, The Linux driver was not yet released and I had to put it back in the box, but in a month, a driver was released that supported it in Linux. I guess to be totally safe, check out the nVIDIA driver situation before you buy or install the new card and check your present driver version for support.
Thank You,
I can confirm the above. If you have the correct version of the NVidia driver it will detect the card.
However, when I upgraded my desktop Optiplex GX620 to Suse 12.1, I ended up with the Xorg nouveau driver. I had been staying away from that and using the drivers from the NVidia download page, but it worked immediatly and even detected my dual monitor setup without any fuss. And I can now use the Display Settings tool in System Settings, which was problematic under 11.4 and the NVidia driver. My card is a GeForce 9400 GT 1Gb, feeding two Dell 2007FP 20" panels. The driver is reporting as “nouveau Gallium (7.11)”. openSuse 12.1 (x86_64), kernel 3.1.0-1.2-desktop x86_64, KDE 4.7.2 “release 5”.
Same story here. I also confirm the enormous improvement in the nouveau driver with the latest kernels. Desktop effects in KDE work flawlessly with it. Using the NVIDIA driver for other reasons, but nouveau does a great job for average desktop usage. If the old card is of 6000 series or newer there’s no need for another driver. NVIDIA takes care of having the latest stable driver available for openSUSE.
AM2 motherboard + AMD 6000 + 4gb memory
Nvidia 9800GT 512gb → Nvidia 560GTX 2GB
For once, I decide at go for newest generation. It cost me $244. OUCH! I usually wait till it gets down to about $100. However, this video card is a huge jump in power and memory. The constant crashes in windows are supposed to be gone after you install it(amazon reviews). Suse linux should have more speed for wine/POL games. Anyone heard of a problem with this upgrade?
Also, I installed a nvidia control panel utility. I think it came from nvidia or packman repo.
I have the nVIDIA GTX 560 1024 MB I got last year and it has been working great for me in openSUSE. I normally install the nVIDIA proprietary video driver driver the hard way. It also works fine in Windows for anything I have done there, but I don’t spend much time using Windows these days.
Thank You,
I don’t spend much time using Windows these days.
PSU? My total system? CPU and motherboard and memory.
Windows has been just for playing games for a long time. I don’t miss lockups during startup, reboot crashes, and too many others to count. Opensuse is running most of the time. It’s has problems, but it’s a lot more stable then mswin.
Thanks for the info. I’ll get an am3 system in a year or two. For now, this upgrade will be enough. 
If you ask about my system then: PSU? 750 WATT TR2 Thermaltake Hard Drives? (2) 120 GB SSD’s Corsair S2 (for SUSE),300 GB** Internal** WD 10K RPM (for Windows), 2 TB Internal Hitachi (for Media Files) & 3TB External (for VirtualBox VXD’s and anything else big) hard drives. CPU, motherboard, memory and video: Intel i7 2600K, ASUS P8P67, 16 GB 1600 Memory and a PNY GTX 560 1024 MB video card makes up my openSUSE computer.
Thank You,
I have nice system not nearly as good.
AMD6000 dual core CPU (3.2GHZ)
gigabyte am2 (16 megs max)
4 gb memory DDR2.
1 SATA terrabyte drive with 32 meg buffer
2 Samsung DVD SATA drives
8 USB ports(2 front, one not working).
IDE drive(300 gb for backups)
1 SATA port (not connected)
EVGA 560GTX with 2gb DDR5 video memory(my newest)
Case fan on powersupply
Standard CPU and backfan, plus additional front fan
Throw in a zip drive and floppy(not connected)
Not the latest tech, but you can’t be up-to-date for long. 
I checked ‘sysinfo’. The video card name is blank. I uninstalled all the nvidia files. I used the one-click to reinstall them and rebooted. The name is still blank. Playonlinux would give an error if there were no 3D drivers installed. ??
You have a very nice setup and better than most. Further, you are so right about keeping up with the latest tech. I did well last year for my computer after having two serious operations in 2009 and not buying hardly anything for over a year, I did go out and buy more than normal last year and it has been great incuding for running VirtualBox and having all sort of VM’s I can run to look up openSUSE user problems, looking for a solution. But its already down about three new Intel CPU’s, still the i7 2600K is a killer on this ASUS motherboard and works like a champ all of the time. Anyway, good to discusss custom rigs like ours. It warms my heart to read about any such setup as yours and thanks so much for sharing it with us.
Thank You,
FYI, I booted and went out of the room. It didn’t sound right. The fan wasn’t on? I rushed back into waiting for the overheat warning sound. It never did. The fan is really quiet! Oblivion runs much faster and the graphics are so much better.
This thing will take many months to get my savings back. It was worth it.
I checked ‘sysinfo’. The video card name is blank. I uninstalled all the nvidia files. I used the one-click to reinstall them and rebooted. The name is still blank. Playonlinux would give an error if there were no 3D drivers installed. Should I be worried?
As I recall, nVIDIA video cards in the 400 & 500’s chipsets do not yet show up a name while 200’s and lower do, but not sure why that is. When you run nvidia-settings, everthing there is correct.
Thank You,
Yes, nvidia server settings shows the correct GPU. Thanks for the info.