Nvidia question: Should I update my Nvidia driver for no reason other than to stay up to date? If not, how do you know when to?

[chrisjordan09]

The longer I frequent these subreddits the more I see people having issues with the newest Nvidia release. It kind of makes me wonder why I should bother. To add to the confusion it can be tricky reading the release notes to these drivers as a beginner, so I'm not always sure when the update is relevant to me.

It just appears to be a lot of trouble I don't need to deal with. But, eventually, I'd have to update, right? So the question becomes, should I update, and when should I update?

[HackPerception]

@chrisjordan09 I think it's worth downloading an update if it's a game ready driver specific to a game you're playing or if it has specific new feature or bug fixe that you want.

I personally update sporadically or when I reinstall Windows (something I do every 2-4 months). It's just more stable that way.

Get a hard drive or partition a virtual drive specifically for an installation of Windows solely for VR. Treat that install of Windows like a "VR Server" that's sole purpose is to do VR. If you do this, and clean install Windows regularly; you'll avoid most of the problems people in the PCVR community face. PCVR is a bunch of different technologies duct-taped together by constantly changing drivers. If you isolate VR from your general computing, you're going to have less troubleshooting. All you'd have to do is reboot your computer to switch between your installs.

I always recommend doing an Nvidia Clean Install every time you install an Nvidia driver.

[dburne]

I always update to the very latest. Never been an issue for me.