What do I gain by installing the chip set drivers?  

Right now I am running Windows 7 with the default windows drivers for the chip set. I have run a driver up date program and it tells me that the chip set needs a driver update. I know I was running the Windows driver not the manufacturer's driver but everything seems to be running very well so what is the advantage of installing the driver from the manufacturer? It lists Intel(R) 82801 GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller 27C4 as the driver.

If there's a chipset driver available from your computer manufacturer's site, chances are it has been modified specifically for the hardware in your computer. Getting windows to utilize it instead of the default generic chipset driver that came with windows 7 is probably going to be more of a hassle than it's worth, however

OK thanks for the responses. If it isn't broke don't fix it

osholt said:

If there are chipset drivers available from your manufacturer I would almost certainly use them over the generic Windows ones.

There's no harm in trying them out at least, you can always roll back the driver if you don't like it or if there are performance issues.

A good way to compare a generic chipset driver to specialised chipset driver is to run your Windows Experience index score before and after and look for any differences.

Windows Experience Index - Reset.

Oli

The chip set driver isn't from the computer manufacturer it's from Intel. My computer is a Dell laptop and on the Dell site there are NO Windows 7 drivers for my laptop just Vista ones. I think that the Vista ones would work from what i have read but I might need to install them in compatibility mode.

I've had a bit of experience with installing windows 7 on older dell computers that aren't supported for 7. The chipset drivers for vista are older than the default drivers and won't install unless you force them, and probably won't make much of a difference. But you can always try. My preference is that if everything is working and there are no unknown devices in Device Manager, I'm not going to waste any more time searching for drivers.

severedsolo said:

hi Anomaly. Personally I wouldn't install the chipset drivers if you are happy with things the way they are. Microsoft worked very hard to get working drivers into Windows 7 and I am of the belief that apart from Graphic drivers they should be left as they are where possible.

I expect other members will disagree but that is just my $0.02

About the Graphics driver. When I first installed Windows 7 I didn't have aero or some of the other advanced graphics features of 7 and I knew that was because I needed a driver for my video card. I checked Windows update and it was listed there under the optional updates. I let it install and it works great. So maybe Windows doesn't have a generic driver for you but it found the proper one for me so it worked out.

When I decided to install Windows 7 on this machine I though I was going to be in for a big hassle when it came to drivers. The machine is about 4 years old and Dell has no drivers on the web site for Windows 7 on this machine. Turns out the whole thing was a breeze. After install everything worked except the advanced graphics and windows found that driver for me. My touchpad needed a driver and I found that at Synaptics no problem. Couldn't be happier with the install process it was as easy as my Macs and much less problem than XP.

There is an update for my wireless but I have always let windows handle my wireless. Intel's drivers are more hassle than they are worth. They install about 10 processes just to run the wireless card. I have always just disabled them and used Windows wireless and never have issue.