How can I stop my graphics card from updating while I update my computer to Windows 8.1?

"I have a NVIDIA..." That was all I needed to read. In the windows tool bar you should see the NVIDIA logo which runs the software (driver) for your card. Open this up and go to the settings tab. Uncheck the automatically apply and the automatically check for updates options. Restart the PC and the changes will take affect. If for some reason the move from windows 8 to 8.1 still updates it, then it is because the drivers are not compatible, and it needs to. In this case you can do two things. First, you can update to the default card graphics driver by using the CD that came with it (if you have one), or look online for the same driver. The second thing you can do is let NVIDIA update to the latest driver and see if that works. Do the latter one first. If the games are not laggy, bingo. If they are, before you reinstall another driver, go into the NVIDIA setting described earlier, and set them to max performance over energy efficient. This will make sure the card put out all its horse power. If it is STILL to slow for you, verify the game you are playing is utilizing the most memory on the card it can. So if you have a 2GB card, allocate 2048MB to it. Still slow? change those drivers and repeat the steps.

This is all assuming the card was not slow in the first place. If after all that trial and error, you can always adjust the game settings to use less resources. I don't use 8.1, so I haven't done any research on whether or not it is more intensive or not than 8. BUT if you go from 64 bit 8, to 32 bit 8.1, then that will have a significant impact as well. If you use the auto update tool to go from 8 to 8.1, then you won't even have to worry about that.

Why are you updating? What are you running now? You update the OS you have to update the drivers or they won't work right. If updating to 8.1 is causing problems, don't update. Your card may not have drivers for 8.1 and that might be why it doesn't work well.

unplug your graphics card and plug the monitor into the included ports on the back. Update to 8.1 then plug the card back in. that MAY work. Not completely sure.