I unpacked the tar files and followed the directions and got this error when I attempted make install:

You appear to be compiling the NVIDIA kernel module with
a compiler different from the one that was used to compile
the running kernel. This may be perfectly fine, but there
are cases where this can lead to unexpected behaviour and
system crashes.

If you know what you are doing and want to override this
check, you can do so by setting IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH.

In any other case, set the CC environment variable to the
name of the compiler that was used to compile the kernel.

*** Failed cc sanity check. Bailing out! ***
make: *** [gcc-check] Error 1

I checked the FAQ in the readme and it told me to change the compiler to the version which was used, I found the version but I have no idea how to change the compiler.

just recompile your kernel with your current compiler

well i don't think there is any cases where you have to recompile your kernel just to get the nvidia drivers to work, so lets start off easy and type this before you start the installer and see if this helps...
export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=yes

and just for spite see if this shows the same gcc version by comparing version numbers:
gcc -v 2>&1 | tail -1
compared to version in:
cat /proc/version

so as long as the major versions match then use the ignore_cc_mismatch, and what i mean by this is, if you get the output of:
3.3.1 from one
and
3.3.2 from the other, then that is a match as 3.3 == 3.3