Has anyone ever actually done any benchmarks before and after installing Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility to determine whether it improves performance?
While I've never come across any tests, from my own experience it seems to make a difference.
you can see the difference in performance really no need to benchmark.
Prior to Windows 7....I often loaded the chipset drivers without question. With my new build, I tested pre and post the Intel chipset drivers and saw no difference whatsoever. Of course, in the past, I always had exclamation points in device manager and needed the drivers...but these days everything comes up fine.
How can it improve performance though when Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility only contains INF files, no SYS files? Since it is just INF files, is it only useful to users who have exclamation points next to components listed in Device Manager?
not true. depending on your motherboard installing windows can have the system tell you any of the on-board hardware is something else, and once in awhile non motherboard hardware. in this case it will not have an exclamation point by the component. the component will be simply listed as the wrong type or version and thus point to the wrong driver. the component may or may not work correctly under this situation, however even if it does not work it will not have the exclamation point next to it because windows believes it installed correctly. i have had this over the years with ide controllers, soundcards, and sata controllers. one reason this happens is downloading driver updates from windows update. avoid this mistake. microsoft has gotten better over the years but still has a ways to go yet in this area.
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