Windows 7: Why get graphics drivers from OEM when ATI offers them?

My HP desktop came with an ATI HD5770, using driver version 8.740.0.0, dated Aug 2010.

Windows update offered an updated driver a couple of months ago, which failed to load.



People here have recommended getting updates from the OEM (HP, in this case) instead of from Windows Update. But HP doesn't offer anything newer than that Aug 2010 version. Sux.

So I went to ATI and they have the newer driver, version 8.902.0.0
It works.

Is this the preferred method?

Yes in general the Manufacturer has the latest and "best" version available. The OEM's rarely update drivers as long as the ones they ship work without fault. On the very rare occasion an OEM may install a modified version of a card and only their driver will be 100% compatible.

Note that with most "major" vendors, this is not uncommon, although with ATI chips this is less a problem than say with nVidia chips. Unless there's something wrong with the OEM's drivers for video for your board, I always recommend using the OEM drivers versus the vendor's drivers. I've seen enough burned out/destroyed nVidia and ATI video chips on laptops because the reference driver from the vendor didn't take something into account the OEM had done to the reference design for their own implementation, and caused (over the course of a year or two) irreparable thermal damage to the device.

Desktop card Carl, not a laptop. For a desktop card there is no reason not to get the drivers directly from AMD or Nvidia. The only difference between an OEM card and retail is the OEM may have a DevID that isn't in the INF of the driver file which will cause it to not install. Biggest difference between a card bought OEM (from Dell, HP, etc) and what you can buy at say Newegg, is the price. In most cases the OEM card can cost up to twice as much as the retail.

I do agree with you about the drivers for a laptop GPU though. Even more so when the laptop uses switchable graphics, in which case the reference driver from AMD or Nvidia will fail every time.

That is true indeed - somehow I missed the "desktop" part, which is pretty rare to get a non-reference design (although with factory-overclock, I tend to stick with the OEM's drivers).

Even then it doesn't matter as most of the card makers link back to AMD or Nvidia anyway. That and the drivers from the card maker are identical as they don't/can't make any changes to the driver files.