Last Updated on 1st February 2023

Are you having trouble with your AMD or NVidia graphics card drivers? Do you want to get rid of them and start fresh with a clean installation? If so, then Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) is just what you need. DDU is a powerful tool that will safely remove all files of installed GPU drivers from your system, allowing for easy and hassle-free driver reinstallation for your graphics card.

Let’s just jump straight on how to properly uninstall your AMD or NVidia graphics card drivers and install the latest one.

How To Uninstall AMD or NVidia GPU Drivers using DDU

Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) is the tool we will be using in this guide.

DDU is a software utility designed to thoroughly remove any trace of AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel graphics card drivers from a system. It works in conjunction with the Windows Device Manager to help users perform clean uninstallation of their graphic driver, allowing them to avoid potential problems that can arise when installing new drivers.

Let’s start!

What I want you to do is go ahead and download Display Driver Uninstaller and save it.

The next step is to download the graphics card driver. Depending on your GPU, navigate to either AMD or NVidia website and download the latest (recommend) driver.

Do not download the optional driver because sometimes they may not function as expected and cause issues later.

Now that you have both DDU and GPU drivers saved on your pc, I want you to go ahead and boot into safe mode.

To do that, follow the steps below:

Go to the search bar and type System Configuration, and click on it.

Navigate to the Boot tab, and tick the option Safe boot.

Open this guide on your phone, because you won’t have internet access in safe mode.

Click Apply, OK, and then Restart.

After the restart, you should be in a Safe Mode environment.

Go ahead and look for the Display Driver Uninstaller folder you previously downloaded, extract it, and run the file as administrator.

Once the program is up and running, go to the top left corner and click on Options, scroll down, and tick the option “Prevent downloads of drivers from “Windows Update”……..”.

You may notice that we already paused Windows updates on a previous step, but we are doing this just to ensure nothing goes wrong. So, once you tick that option, click OK and close.

On the right side, click on the option “Select Device Type” and choose GPU, and under that, select the manufacturer of your GPU(NVIDIA, AMD, INTEL).

Press “Clean and do not Restart“.

This process will take a few minutes to do its thing, and it will let you know when everything is done with a pop-up message.

Your screen might flash during the process, and you may notice that if you have more than one monitor, the second and so on may not be working, but that’s fine since it will get back to working in the next step.

Once you get the message that the uninstallation has been completed, press Yes to exit the program.

Now you want to boot back to normal mode, so you will have to revert to the previously changed setting. To do that, follow the steps below:

Go to the search bar and type System Configuration, and click on it.

Navigate to the Boot tab, and untick the option Safe boot.

Click Apply, OK, and then Restart.

Congratz, you’ve successfully uninstalled your graphics card drivers using DDU.

How To Install New AMD or NVidia Drivers

Your PC doesn’t have a driver installed right now, so let’s install the one you previously downloaded.

Go ahead, run the driver file you downloaded(Run as administrator), and follow the on-screen instructions. Make sure to tick the option “Perform a clean install“.

Installing NVidia Drivers

Unmark any feature you don’t need, and make sure to tick the option “Perform a clean installation” and click on Next.

Now your screen may start flickering and going black for a few seconds. That’s normal, no worries. Once the installation is completed, restart your PC and come back to this post, so you start optimizing the Nvidia settings.

Installing AMD Drivers

Best AMD Driver Settings

Go ahead and optimize your AMD driver settings. You can either copy the settings from the photo below, or if you want a more in-depth guide, you can go ahead and read my guide on how to optimize AMD driver settings.

Here is a quick sum-up of what matters:

• Turn animations and effects off.
• Turn overlays off.
• Freesync is mostly a personal preference but if you are aiming for the lowest input lag and latency, then just turn it off. Freesync adds a tiny bit of input lag, and it’s useless if you are playing over your refresh rate. For example, if you got a 144hz monitor and you are playing on 200+ fps constantly, then freesync is useless for you, but on the other hand, if you got a 240hz monitor and you are playing on 140-200fps then it can make your whole experience smoother with the only disadvantage of adding a little bit(some times not even noticeable) input lag.
• Almost all of the settings are turned off and set to performance where applicable.
• Do some tests with the Anti-Lag option. I’ve found out that on high-end GPU’s you shouldn’t be using it, but on older ones, it really helps. So take like few minutes and do some tests with it.
• Set your resolution to your monitor’s native resolution.
• Set the refresh rate to the highest possible.

Next, go to the Tuning tab, apply any overclock or undervolt on your GPU, edit the fan curve and you are good to go.

If you are unsure how to overclock your AMD graphics card you can either follow a tutorial from Youtube or in case you are uncomfortable doing it by yourself, you can always hit me up and we can schedule an appointment and I will do it for you.

Best NVidia Driver Settings

Go ahead and optimize your Nvidia driver settings. You can either copy the settings from the photo below or if you want a more in-depth guide, you can go ahead and read my guide on how to optimize NVidia driver settings.

Here is a quick sum-up of what matters:

• Almost all of the settings are turned off and set to performance where applicable.
• Set the refresh rate to the highest possible.
• Set your resolution to your monitor’s native resolution.
• Choose No Scaling, unless you play on stretched resolutions.
• G-Sync is mostly a personal preference but if you are aiming for the lowest input lag and latency, then just turn it off. G-Sync adds a tiny bit of input lag, and it’s useless if you are playing over your refresh rate. For example, if you got a 144hz monitor and you are playing on 200+ fps constantly, then G-Sync is useless for you, but on the other hand, if you got a 240hz monitor and you are playing on 140-200fps, then it can make your whole experience smoother with the only disadvantage of adding a little bit(some times not even noticeable) input lag.

Download MSI Afterburner, edit your fan curve, and apply any overclocks and you should be good to go.

If you are unsure how to overclock your NVidia graphics card you can either follow a tutorial from Youtube or in case you are uncomfortable doing it by yourself, you can always hit me up and we can schedule an appointment and I will do it for you.