no driver list when upgrading graphics card before upgrading the driver

[SuperUserNameMan]

Hello,

Might be related to #83

LinuxMint: 21.2 Cinnamon

Issue : the Driver Manager does not list new drivers when the graphics card is upgraded before the driver and when the older driver does not support the newer graphics card.

graphics cards: from Nvidia GTX 1060 to Nvidia RTX 4060

drivers: from nvidia-driver-470 (or later) to nvdia-driver-535

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Experience :

It took me long time to figure out why the driver manager was not showing any driver after I upgraded my graphics card from a Nvidia GTX 1060 to a RTX 4060.

With the GTX 1060, I was still using an older version of the proprietary driver (version 470 or later) because of compatibility issues with Steam.

When I replaced the GTX 1060 with the RTX 4060, the Driver-manager was empty and saying that I did not need any driver.
But when I benchmarked the new RTX 4060, the performances were half those of the older GTX 1060.

As I was misled by the Driver Manager message, I thought it was because my 400 watts PSU was too weak for the new GPU (despite the older and the newer are both 115W TDP), and I upgraded the PSU to a 650 watts one, only to discover that the performances were still half those of the older graphic card.

The real reason of the low performances was because the older driver I still had on the system did not support the new GPU : The RTX 4060 required driver 535 which was not proposed by the Driver-manager.

I had to venture into Synaptic to try to upgrade the driver, but it led to a black screen which required hazardous hard reboot.

Only then, the Driver-manager started listing drivers : nvidia-driver-535 and xserver-xorg-video-nouveau.

So, to be sure 535 was correctly installed despite the hard reboot, I had to switch to nouveau and back to 535.