Help Changing Video Card from Radeon to GeForce

[davej45]

I've recently purchased a new video card for my desktop, as I was previously using the onboard graphics.
It took quite a bit of tweaking to get the onboard card, plus my installed programs set up properly,
and I would like to avoid destroying my installation in switching over from the proprietary Radeon drivers
to the new Nvidia GeForce Drivers.

First some system specs:

AMD FX-6100 w/ 8GB Ram
AsRock 880GM-LE FX Mainboard
Onboard Radeon HD 4250
Dual Samsung 1440x900 monitors
Linux Mint 13 Maya- MATE
Kernal 3.2.0.32-generic (x86_64)
Xorg Server 1.11.3
AMD 12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64
desktop set to 2880x900 (spanned across both monitors)

The new video card is a Zotac GeForce GT 630, which scores about 7X better than the HD 4250 on the Passmark video test, hence the desire to upgrade.

As I see it, the steps to accomplish this task would seem to be:
1)Uninstall/purge the proprietary Radeon Drivers (using the supplied uninstall script?)
2)Somehow set the video driver to a generic VESA driver to use with the the onboard HD4250.
3)Reset the X-org configuration for the VESA driver
4)Power down the system
5)Install the new GeForce video card, disable the onboard video
6)Restart the computer, and hope the generic VESA driver works with the new card.
7)Install the proprietary Nvidia GeForce drivers
Tweak Nvidia and Xorg setting to set up the desktop for a spanned display.

Step 1 I can handle, as well as steps 7 and 8, but I'm not so sure how to accomplish steps 2 and 3.

Has anyone tried a proprietary Radeon to proprietary Nvidia driver switch?
What steps did you take to make the transition, and how well did it work?

Any advice or tips would be appreciated!

davej45

[cwsnyder]

You actually can have Radeon and nVidia drivers and/or two separate video cards installed in the same machine in Linux. You don't actually have to remove the Radeon drivers if you want to switch back. If your BIOS requires that you disable the on-board video, you can simply do that after installing the nVidia driver. I did this under Ubuntu 9.10 (a few years ago, of course).