Are drivers from ATI (AMD) different from the manufacturer drivers?

[dazco]

I have a XFX 5850 and i'm wondering, would the driver you download from the XFX site be different from the one on the ATI/AMD site? And is the software then driver comes with the same, IE:cat control center?

 

[Solarstarshines]

they are the same
just when you buy the card and recieve the disk it is ussually the older drivers already because at the time that was the one used

If you buy a new gpu it is better recomended to just snag them from the site and update it all together

 

[stormy13]

If it helps any there is no such thing as manufacturer's drivers, they all come from ATI/AMD. Same goes for Nvidia.

Same goes for video drivers for laptops, except for them you are better off getting them from the laptop manufacturer. There are couple reasons for this,

1. The laptop manufacturer can and usually does mod the INF/INF's (they cannnot modify the actual driver files themselves) to work with whatever display is on the laptop, and/or any power saving features for example.

2. Until only recently both AMD and Nvidia were not allowed by the laptop manufacturers to provide a reference driver for the reasons in #1. Both can and do now for most of the laptop manufacturers (Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic (may be others) are a few that don't), but again #1 comes into play as to whether they will work fully.

 

[smarteyeball]

As has been mentioned - grab the drivers from AMD.

There is no advantage in using the drivers on the supplied discs.