NVIDIA drivers on Windows
This page installs the NVIDIA driver on a GPU server running Windows Server 2025. Connect with Remote Desktop to the server's IP as Administrator, with the password the install page showed.
Download the driver
NVIDIA's driver for these cards on Windows Server is the NVIDIA RTX Server Driver. Find the current version at nvidia.com/drivers with these choices:
- Product category: NVIDIA RTX / Quadro
- Product series: Quadro RTX Series
- Product: Quadro RTX 6000
- Operating system: Windows Server 2025
For Windows 11 or 10, pick that operating system instead; the server driver is for Windows Server 2022 and 2025 only.
Install it
Run the downloaded file and accept the defaults, or install it silently from PowerShell. The tested version was 597.16; replace the URL with the one for the current version:
$url = "https://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/Quadro_Certified/597.16/597.16-nvidia-rtx-winserv-2022-2025-64bit-international-dch-whql.exe"
Invoke-WebRequest $url -OutFile C:\nvidia-driver.exe
Start-Process C:\nvidia-driver.exe -ArgumentList "-s -noreboot" -WaitThe cards work straight away; no reboot is needed.
Check that it works
PS C:\> nvidia-smi
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 597.16 Driver Version: 597.16 CUDA Version: 13.2 |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Driver-Model | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 Quadro RTX 6000 WDDM | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | Off |
| 33% 30C P0 51W / 260W | 0MiB / 24576MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| 1 Quadro RTX 6000 WDDM | 00000000:02:00.0 Off | Off |
| 33% 29C P0 52W / 260W | 40MiB / 24576MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+CUDA Version is the newest CUDA version the driver supports, not something that is installed. Software built for a newer CUDA version fails on this driver, see Run Qwen3.8-27B for an example.
With the driver installed, Windows moves the desktop onto one of the cards, which is why card 1 shows 40 MiB in use. The Console in Flux keeps working.
Before the driver is installed, Device Manager lists the cards as Microsoft Basic Display Adapter with an error. That is normal.