If for safety you want to keep the previous one (i.e. the one you have now) just rename it before putting the 2.9.7 downloaded.
As you see I kept inside both previous versions.
![SAMJ-folder.PNG](./download/file.php?id=51494)
- SAMJ-folder.PNG (36.95 KiB) Viewed 1714 times
The active one should NOT have suffixes, just "gmic_gimp_qt" as sownloaded/unzipped.