Installing Chipset Drivers - from Dell or Intel?

Question

I noticed the chipset driver on Intel's site for my motherboard (865 family) we're over half a year more recent than Dell's offering. Will there be any conflict if I install the chipset driver directly from Intel or does Dell force you to go through their channels for some reason?

FWIW Ive been installing ATI's drivers directly from their website for my video card over Dell because Dell is always at least three months behind for whatever reason. Havent had a problem yet. Are Dell's driver packages even necessary, especially considering their often outdated?

BigBrother · Answer

zestyllahma,   Using the chipset driver from Intel will not cause any conflict.  It will not provide any improvement in performance or function, either.  The chipset driver on Intel's website is a combined 800 series chipset driver.  With each new chipset that Intel adds to the 800 series chipset family, they add that driver to the driver file that they offer on their site.  It is similar to what Nvidia has done with their 'Unified Driver' file and what ATI has done with the 'Catalyst' driver file.  The Intel driver file simply includes more drivers for more and newer Intel chipsets.  The actual driver that will be installed with the file from Intel will be the same driver that is installed with the file from Dell.    Steve

zestyllahma · Answer

Thanks for the response.

That makes sense, but Im not sure if the same assertion holds true with ATI's Catalyst drivers. In the sense that there have been performance improvements with subsequent releases of their drivers on older hardware (my 9800pro for example). The drivers that Dell is offering for ATI are version 4.9 for instance, where as the latest (4.12b) do show frame rate improvements in several recent benchmarks. That would make Dell's driver release outdated no?

Sorry if Im misunderstanding you here.

BigBrother · Answer

zestyllahma,

This is true for the Catalyst drivers. ATI's drivers are almost always in need of some improvement. ATI does keep up with improving their video card drivers and fixing problems with their own drivers. Intel drivers on the other hand are well written and do not really need fixing. Intel has simply chosen to roll the entire chipset driver family into one file to make it easier to locate, download and install chipset drivers. New Intel chipsets offer new functionality (810 vs 810e vs 815e vs 845 vs...), but a newer driver file will not enhance the functionality of an existing Intel chipset. You can download it and install it if you wish, it will not hurt a thing. If you want to enhance the performance of your system, you may want to consider downloading and installing the latest Intel Application Accelerator. It is a replacement for their older ATA-100 controller driver. It does manage buffering more effectively and does provide a noticeable improvement in system performance with IDE drives. The latest version supports RAID. Check this link:

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/

Steve

zestyllahma · Answer

OK, that clears things up a lot. Really appreciate the info, thanks a bunch. :)

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Installing Chipset Drivers - from Dell or Intel?

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