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If I switch from an HD7770 (I just loaded the most current drivers for that series last week via amd.com) to an HD6850 do I have to install new drivers or will the 7000 series catalyst drivers work normally for the HD6850?

Yes it's the same. Hardware compatibility can be found in the release notes. http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion124ReleaseNotes.aspx

Well you will soon find out...if it does not work correctly after a couple reboots, i would rerun the driver 12.6 or 12.7 beta

Sounds like one for and one maybe? Is anyone sure?

It's the same driver.

If you're worried about it uninstall and reinstall. It's not going to change anything, but maybe it will give you peace of mind.

It'll work for sure.

I have a machine image that I clone machines with on an almost daily basis. The catalyst drivers pick up whatever cards are in the machine even if the original image used a different card.

Even in a worst case scenario where there are some unexpected problems, You'll just have to reinstall the catalyst drivers again. I'm sure you'll find some way to cope for the two minutes that's going to take...

Ok here's what happened:

Afters swapping in the HD6850 the screen res was limited to 1440 x 900 on a 1080P 1920 x 1080 LCD HDTV. I than uninstalled the cat driver and downloaded the driver from AMD's site (using HD6000 series instead of 7000). Than installed that driver. (Is it actually the same exact driver but they just list it under two different generations?) Just wondering.

After the re-install of Presumably the same driver the screen res went back to normal and gaming is good.

Sigh...

To all the lil boys out there who do not code drivers, even if the driver is the same version, you have to get the correct card because each bios is different with each card. Dunno why everyone is saying its ok to switch without reinstalling.

Rageypoo wrote:

Sigh...

To all the lil boys out there who do not code drivers, even if the driver is the same version, you have to get the correct card because each bios is different with each card. Dunno why everyone is saying its ok to switch without reinstalling.

Yes, all the "lil boys" who do not code drivers are fools. Sorry dude, but I'm pretty sure the percent of people on this site that code drivers is minuscule. No need to criticize. Not to mention that you're either mistaken or you worded your response incorrectly. AMD doesn't require you to pick a particular card for driver downloads, but rather only the series of card in the system. Are you saying that all the BIOSes for the 7xxx series are the same? Or did you just want to criticize before thinking out what you actually meant to say?

Rageypoo wrote:

Sigh...

To all the lil boys out there who do not code drivers, even if the driver is the same version, you have to get the correct card because each bios is different with each card. Dunno why everyone is saying its ok to switch without reinstalling.

Well, when this "lil boy" went from an 8800gtx to a gtx480, he did not have to reinstall the drivers. I guess that was Nvidia not AMD so maybe my bad for assuming it would be the same. Also, next time you have "Big Boy" knowledge to share, why not do it before the fact and not after?

Rageypoo wrote:

Sigh...

To all the lil boys out there who do not code drivers, even if the driver is the same version, you have to get the correct card because each bios is different with each card. Dunno why everyone is saying its ok to switch without reinstalling.

Calling everyone who doesn't work as an nvidia or AMD software engineer a 'lil boy' kind of says everything we need to know about you.

After imaging anything up to 50 different machines a month over the course of the last, uh, eight-ish years, I have to say that it has worked for me:

• a few thousand times
• over several generations of graphics cards from both nvidia and AMD/ATI
• across four different operating systems (obviously different images)
• without ever needing more than an additional reboot

Why exactly do you say it won't work?
Why does the driver have to match the BIOS version? Do you honestly believe that every time a motherboard or SSD vendor releases a new BIOS that your hardware won't work without new drivers?

Perhaps you would like to go back to trolling the YouTube comments pages.
Here on the TR forums we tend to burn trolls rather than feed them; There's this generally mature rapport going on where arguments are usually backed up by facts/examples/links in the interest of actually getting something more useful than a flamewar happening. It doesn't always work but it has a pretty good track record so far....

Just a friendly warning to everyone to please keep the discussion civil. Escalation will result in the thread being locked.

--SS

I think it's safe to say that while it seems like it should work, you can never be sure with this type of thing until you do it. Most of us have probably worked on computers long enough to know that you can never be totally sure.