Hi, I have made a fresh windows (xp) install and need to install my drivers, starting with my motherboard drivers. Is it best to obtain the drivers from the motherboard manufacturer or the individual chipset/component manufacturer? The chipset/parts manufacturer often have more up to date (higher version number) drivers but I have heard the motherboard manufacturer might make modifications to the drivers to optimize them for the particular motherboard. Maybe chipset drivers are ok to download from their respecive manufacturer while one should stick with the motherboard manufacturers Audio/LAN drivers? Driver packages are often a bit vauge on what they include. How likeley is it that USB 2.0 will work without downloading extra drivers for it? While we're at it, what about graphics cards? ATI/nVidia versus Gigabyte/Saphire/ect I have spent some time slimming down my windows install, creating scripts for installing software, setting up different hardware profiles etc so I would like to get the most out of my hardware. Any insight would be highly apreciated.

Usually you'll install the drivers that came with you hardware and then, if your curious, visit the manufacturer website and see if there are newer ones.

In my experience, the only drivers that are worth updating are video drivers, unless you have a really crappy mobo or something else.

Thank you owl for a very quick reply

I am aware that it mostly really doesnt matter what driver version you have, but during this reformat/reinstall I have become rather picky and would like to get it right. Therefore..

What do you mean by "the only drivers that are worth updating are video drivers"? Is that worth as in "worth the time and effort to get the chipset/component drivers from their respective manufacturers (cryptic) websites" (this I really dont mind) or "worth the risk of it not working as well/at all" (I dont want that!) ?

thanks again

Video drivers, I mean for Hardware Accelerated 3D Graphics, if you have an Nvidia or ATI video card, for example, you better download the lastest drivers as they usually improve the performance of the device quite a lot. In the case of Nvidia, and some old video cards as the 440 MX the best you'll get are the 6.14.10.9371 ones.

That's all. Install everyting from their respective CDs and download the lastest video drivers.

I kind of feel I am not making myself understood here

Basically the only thing I want to know is what to do with my motherboard:

Will downloading the chipset/LAN/audio drivers individually from their respective manufacturers result in worse performance that downloading the "Mobo-pack" from (in my case) ASUS?

My CDs are long gone so Im going to have to download the drivers off the net anyhow.

download whatever drivers work with your hardware. It is not important.

I T I S N O T I M P O R T A N T

Well thanks I guess it wont get much clearer than that

Ill download both and do some benchmarking

EDIT:

Quote: I T I S N O T I M P O R T A N T

What I mean is there's clearly a difference. Just wanted to know if that difference is nothing more than motherboard manufacturers adding bloat software to their packages or if they actually do something useful (something like linking the storage drivers with the audio drivers to obtain better performance when playing sound files)

Cheers

[Edited by - Thunder Sky on April 13, 2009 9:43:32 AM]