Personal computing discussed
Arvald wrote:Most drivers are handled through windows update now unless you have some really oddball hardware.
Video drivers you just install the latest app from the vendor (ie Catalyst for AMD) and it will even download the latest version for you if you want. They do tend to keep a history in the install folder though.
Mostly the process is seemless that you never really need to worry as long as you let them manage themselves.
Arvald wrote:Most drivers are handled through windows update now unless you have some really oddball hardware.
ChronoReverse wrote:Besides the video drivers, why would you constantly update your drivers anyway? Don't mess with what ain't broken.
Arvald wrote:Mostly that stuff was working late windows XP though there was a lack of WHQD Windows Hardware Qualified Drivers. Things got better through Vista and perfected in Win7.
Though in Windows update a lot of drivers do show up in the optional updates.
Catalyst usually shoes a little popup from the alert area showing there is a new driver available.
C-A_99 wrote:Arvald wrote:Most drivers are handled through windows update now unless you have some really oddball hardware.
A lot if said oddball hardware doesn't get picked up by these utilities anyways, if it can't get picked up by Windows 7/8 itself. For such hardware, you typically have to look up the device name (I just snap a picture of the whole device to make it easier) and scourge Google for drivers. I got stuff like the ancient Nintendo USB connector to work as a WiFi adapter on Windows 7 x64 this way. (Mostly because I'm too cheap to buy more hardware especially if it's for older computers that I rarely use anyway.)
axeman wrote:Since I'm not too concerned with gaming performance anymore - and the games I do run are doubtful to be the focus of the driver developers anyhow - I don't bother updating graphics drivers anymore. Doing the "update to the latest graphics driver" thing has burned me more than once, with both the red and green team.
Example: my in-law's computer had a Geforce 6200 card. Updated to the latest drivers, since it was using old as hell drivers. Some pretty basic game with 2d graphics started blue screening the PC every time. Granted this is on XP, but as of this post, Nvidia supposedly released a driver on 2013.01.24 that supports Gefore 6200 cards on XP. My cynical nature tells me, they've done next to no testing on this driver on that particular "supported" hardware. Now I take the stance, it ain't broke, don't fix it, even with graphics drivers.
Thank goodness I don't bother with current "AAA" games anymore.
JohnC wrote:Yea... Win7/8 does a great job of finding chipset/NIC/audio/wifi and other drivers, using Windows Update. The only stand-alone driver I always manually download is video card driver (since I play games and want to know what changes new driver contains and whether it's worth getting it at all).
Forge wrote:I would only worry about drivers that aren't auto detected. Windows 8 does a pretty bang up job of detecting and installing anything older than it is, which is pretty much everything so far.
Forge wrote:AI Charger+ and Gigabyte's ON/OFF Charge are pretty hackish. I have AI Charger+ working just fine on my Lenovo laptop with Windows 8. Be sure to grab a recent version. Older versions make Windows 8 unbootable, like you said.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/SABERTO ... ownload_36
It's under Utils:
Version 2.00.01 Copy Link
Description Ai Charger+
Ai Charger+ V2.00.01 for Windows XP/7/8 32bit & 64bit.
File Size 24,16 MBytes
update 2012.10.03
Download from Global
Works for me.
Arvald wrote:Forge wrote:AI Charger+ and Gigabyte's ON/OFF Charge are pretty hackish. I have AI Charger+ working just fine on my Lenovo laptop with Windows 8. Be sure to grab a recent version. Older versions make Windows 8 unbootable, like you said.
Lucky you, I used it as an example for case in point that Win8 does not detect everything no are there always drivers after.
Could be some models of boards work some don't. I had to restore my win 7 system and start over.
If you search the web there are plenty of posts saying it does not work.
I have P8Z68-V Pro that does not work. and yes I downloaded the Windows 8 version of the driver.