AMD chipset drivers & driver update software  

Hello Everyone,

I have Gigabyte motherboard GA-790FXTA-UD5. The chipset as you can see is AMD 7 series - namely 790FX. Now my question is:
Can anyone tell me where I can download the drivers for the said chipset apart from Gigabyte website as I believe the ones on their website are not up to date (audio and LAN on their website are definitely not up to date)? I did try AMD website but the layout is so misleading and confusing, that after downloading something which I think is chipset driver, I decided that in the future I don't want to have anything to do with AMD and their chipsets..

The reason I'm looking for updated drivers is that I tried one of those glorious driver update softwares and it turned out that my drivers (the ones from gigabyte)were not up to date.

I did install the drivers from AMD website and now all driver update software checks confirm that my chipset drivers are up to date (although looking at the extracted folders these drivers seem to be AMD South Bridge 8xx - whereas mine is SB750). What's more, I did contact AMD for information in regard to my problem and they pointed me towards Gigabyte website and the drivers from their website (the "not up to date" ones). Well, isn't that confusing??

I would like to also get to know your opinion on the driver update software. Is it reliable and worth using? If so, which one would you recommend. I personally have purchased Driver Genius Professional and it seems it serves its purpose very well.

Cheers lads,

Luc.

Would that be it? The SB drivers? If so, what about the Gigabyte and the fact that AMD support pointed Gigabyte site?

Link

Would that be it? The SB drivers?

Yes it would. You may also want the RAID or AHCI driver if you have your SATA ports configured as such.

Gigabyte may have made the motherboard but they have nothing to do with writing the drivers. AMD made the chipset and the write the drivers, all Gigabyte has on their site is the exact same thing (date not withstanding). Looking at the specs and what downloads Gigabyte has for it,

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket AM3 - GA-790FXTA-UD5 (rev. 1.0)

the only one's you would actually need to get from them are the Marvell and USB 3 drivers, the rest (Realtek audio and LAN) can be found at Realtek (The LAN driver if working I would leave alone, the audio just check in the Sound forum for updates regarding it).

Gigabyte may have made the motherboard but they have nothing to do with writing the drivers. AMD made the chipset and the write the drivers, all Gigabyte has on their site is the exact same thing (date not withstanding). Looking at the specs and what downloads Gigabyte has for it,

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket AM3 - GA-790FXTA-UD5 (rev. 1.0)

the only one's you would actually need to get from them are the Marvell and USB 3 drivers, the rest (Realtek audio and LAN) can be found at Realtek (The LAN driver if working I would leave alone, the audio just check in the Sound forum for updates regarding it).

Well the chipset driver from Gigabyte is definitely older than the one from AMD (both were installed, versions checked). Why wouldn't they update everything time wise? And what about those Driver update software? There was a time when I spent the whole night looking for proper drivers because the driver checks were saying that good few of my drivers were not up to date...

Why wouldn't they update everything time wise?

Lazy, too many pages to update, who knows. If it helps any Asus isn't any better, and if anything are probably worse.

And what about those Driver update software?

Comfort-ware at best, snake-oil at worst. Chipset drivers for the most part may or may not have any benefit from being updated, and you will find lots of prople that will say not to update them on a working system. The only drivers you should have to update would be the video and/or audio drivers as they can and do contain fixes, performance improvements, etc. And again they don't have to be updated just because there is an update, if the current installed driver is woerking as it should then leave well enough alone unless there is something in the release notes that addresses a specific issue you may be having, or if it is something like a new game and it will only work with the latest.

Best advise about those driver update programs is to not use them.

Well then, thank you Stormy13, thank you richc46. That answers my questions to a certain extent.

Cheers,

Luc.