4. Check the Big Graphics Vendors’ Support Pages, Too!
The drivers I’ve had the most problems with over the years have been those for my graphics cards, both from Nvidia and AMD/ATI. That’s why I routinely check their support pages as well for drivers, instead of relying on the driver scanner databases (which can lag between 15 and 30 days behind new driver updates on the graphics support pages). To be safe, I try to stay away from beta drivers and stick with WHQL (drivers certified by the Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Labs) when I can. But sometimes, when a current driver is acting especially flaky — and this does happen from time to time, with intermittent blackouts, terminally dim brightness levels, or outright black screens with only a mouse cursor indicate there’s an OS running somewhere in there — any new driver is preferable, because there’s at least a chance that it may work.
Whether your particular graphics card is AMD/ATI or Nvidia, I urge you to visit their support/download pages at least monthly to check your installed driver against their latest and greatest offerings.
- 1. Why Drivers Matter
- 2. Driver Update Services Check Everything For You
- 3. Keeping Up with Intel: The Intel Driver Update Utility
- 4. Check the Big Graphics Vendors’ Support Pages, Too!
- 5. Other Visit-Worthy Vendor Sites to Check
- 6. Right Driver, Wrong Outcome
- 7. What To Do When Updates Don't Work
Not all latest drivers are good, some might be unstable than the previous one. Anyway, good article about windows drivers.
"dev" doesn't always work. On mine system it launches Adobe Device Manager.
hoping that ATI reads this.
For atheros drivers check the unofficial driver site at http://www.atheros.cz/
There are many atheros drivers whih are more current.
Why must the writer list shareware only? There are free alternatives worth mentioning out there...
As a Dell shop at work we just have to check with Dell for drivers. In some cases we can get drivers from a newer version of the same product to work. At home I have moved laptop and desktop to Mac OS X and the server is a NAS or Linux solution.
With a Mac the worst thing you can do is buy dodgy hardware and load the vendors driver, now you have similar problems as a Windows machine with dodgy drivers. :-(
Dell often has good driver support for their systems, sometimes they are the only source of an updated driver for a certain component. However if they never sold a system with a newer O/S (such as Vista or 7), it is very unlikely they'll list any drivers for that O/S. And of course for video drivers, they typically list one ancient one. So even with Dell you sometimes still have to hunt.
Dell isn't always so great with updates to their drivers. I tried installing a driver for the wireless network card on my Latitude D600 (yes, it's ancient). They released about a million different configurations of the latitude, and probably a dozen different wireless cards were included. Luckily for me, I worked around the issue by discovering the wireless didn't work because someone had pulled the card, but man, was it ever a pain trying to figure out what I needed to download if I did have a wireless card.
Why do people like to keep updating their driver? unless its a graphic card with new games every year then no need to keep messing stuff up. If it aint broken dont fix it.
I ran the intel driver update utility, and IE8 popped up a message asking if I wanted to allow system requirements lab from "Husdawg llc" to install. I figured it was the Intel utility, but since a google search yielded almost nothing on Husdawg, I just said screw it. Screw Intel anyway. A company like intel should not be using shady names like that.
hoping that ATI reads this.
Dont you mean that your hoping Nvidia reads this? it takes me about 10 seconds to update me vid card. check it out its on steam.
I don't think updating drivers at every new release is really necessary unless if your getting problems with the device, because theres a good chance they could bugger things up.
Why do people like to keep updating their driver? unless its a graphic card with new games every year then no need to keep messing stuff up. If it aint broken dont fix it.
If newer technologies ask more don't fix it after it broke.
Seriously application developers first want to see a user base before supporting something.