Posted by PNY Pro on Aug 15, 2019

In this blog post, let’s address the difference between the following driver variations and help you choose the right driver for your graphics card investment.

Quadro ODE driver vs. QNF driver

For Quadro professional graphics cards, there are two driver variants, which are “ODE” and “QNF.”

ODE or “Quadro Optimal Driver for Enterprise” is typically the driver we recommend for customers using Quadro graphics cards. ODE drivers are optimized for overall stability and performance in professional mission-critical environments. They also offer ISV certification and long lifecycle support that enterprise IT and creative professionals rely on.

QNF, or “Quadro New Feature” drivers are derived from the ODE driver, with added support and optimizations for new application features and workstation environment functionality. The QNF drivers are more product specific, and are recommended for users who specifically need access to the new features built into a specific QNF driver.

Overall, PNY recommends deployment of the Quadro ODE driver in most Quadro use cases.

Standard driver package vs. DCH driver package

For each of these driver variants, you will notice there is an option for Windows Driver Type and the choices are “Standard” as well as “DCH.”

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The Standard driver package is what most people are familiar with, and will be the package type generally downloaded for their graphics cards.

DCH, or “Declarative, Componentized, Hardware Support Apps” is a new driver foundation that large System OEMs leverage to support Microsoft Universal Driver adoption. DCH drivers will only install onto systems already equipped with DCH drivers from the OEMs. Large OEMs take advantages of the Universal Driver format so they can unify drivers from different hardware vendors for the wide selection of system platforms and different configurations offered into a single convenient driver software package. This greatly improves the ease of use for customers, but for the vast majority of PNY customers, this is not the driver type to use.

These two driver types are not interchangeable. If you are currently using the Standard driver package, then continue using it. If your system shipped with DCH, then you should continue to download DCH driver packages from NVIDIA.