Is keeping with latest drivers really necessary?

mikolajek

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Well, we often hear/read that we should update our drivers regularly, as the newest versions provide more security/stability/functionality/other enhancements. On the other hand OEM manufacturers want their customers to rely only on drivers available on their own support pages, not on components manufacturers (e.g. Intel) support pages.

Due to my professional and personal interest I often deal with Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops, but I guess it's a common problem for all OEMs. What I see on their support pages in a complete mess in many aspects. Let me tell only a couple of examples:
  • "downgrading" the latest drivers - if you downloaded e.g. version 1.45 yesterday, today you may find version 1.42 marked as latest with no explanation at all,
  • offering different version of the same driver on different localized support sites (while the driver is in English anyway),
  • an update client (e.g. Dell's Client Update Utility, HP's SoftPaq) offering you to download older driver than you have already installed OR driver which is not even listed on the support webpage,
  • ancient drivers versions presented as "latest" (especially Lenovo is the leader here) - while virtually all manufacturers provides significantly updated driver versions, OEM manufacturers make you stick to the version released months ago (I understand it takes time to test new releases, but come on...),
  • Windows Update overwriting OEM manufacturers drivers with its own drivers recorded in its database,
  • ... and many more.
As you can imagine, even struggling to stay current with OEM-provided drivers only may be a nightmare, as they change "latest" available drivers versions back and forward and different sources list different versions as "latest".

So, shall we disregard OEM wish to use only drivers provided by them and download them from components manufacturers pages anyway? This would allows us to stay current. But is it really necessary? Or is it better to fulfill their wish stick to the old well-tested drivers as long as our system operates correctly? What do you think?
 

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If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

In other words, if you aren't having any problems, you shouldn't rush out and update your drivers.
 

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Well, that's the rule of the thumb, right? :) If it works, don't touch it.

However, the new releases are meant for something more than only including new products into them. So it is beneficial to utilize any enhancements.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision M4800
    CPU
    Intel i7-4900MQ
    Memory
    32 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD Graphics 4600 & nVidia Quadro K2100M
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell U2312HM & Dell 2408WFP
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    1920x1080 & 1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 840 EVO 256 GB & Hitachi TravelStar 5K750 750 GB
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My policy is usually: if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

OEM computers often have customized hardware and generic drivers may not be fully compatible. Intel warns about using their video drivers on OEM systems.
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
OEM computers often have customized hardware and generic drivers may not be fully compatible.
Yep, I've heard that before. However, I have some doubts about that.

Since I do forensics, I conducted a test once: I installed OEM-provided network card drivers, traced system file system and registry changes and then - using a clean system - installed original manufacturer-provided drivers and also traced file system and registry changes. I then calculated hashes for all files and they were all the same. The same about contents of registry entires. Of course this test wasn't exhaustive and cannot be treated as an argument supporting thesis that both installation packages were in fact the same. An initial doubt may result from the fact, I used virtual machine for testing, which might have affected installation process.

On the other hand I do agree that there are instances in which generic drivers refuse to get installed and display error messages informing about compatibiity issues.

Thus, I believe that some installation packages are 100% the same (maybe only additionally packaged into OEM-branded startup screen :) ) but they are also other, acutally altered in some way by OEMs. That would - however - only suggest that we should use only OEM-provided driver packages, which I'm fine about. What I don't like is the mess in OEM driver databases which prevents us from recognizing the "true latest" driver available.

And again - there's a simple solution - visit the support page, download all packages listed there as latest, install them and forget them (as long as there are no problems). :) I do realize that. However I'm bound to keeping things in order and update my software regularly and the described situation bothers me. Sure, probably most forum users won't be able to help me about that, but it's worth discussing I believe. Why? Because proper PC configuration that used to be quite simple has been getting more & more difficult and many inexperienced users suffers from it.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision M4800
    CPU
    Intel i7-4900MQ
    Memory
    32 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD Graphics 4600 & nVidia Quadro K2100M
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell U2312HM & Dell 2408WFP
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080 & 1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 840 EVO 256 GB & Hitachi TravelStar 5K750 750 GB
    Browser
    Firefox 32
    Antivirus
    Kaspersky Internet Security 15
However, the new releases are meant for something more than only including new products into them. So it is beneficial to utilize any enhancements.
Generally not in my experience.
 

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    Windows 10 Pro Prieview x64
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    MacBook Pro Core2Duo
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    T7600
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    3
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    ATI Radeon X1600
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    1440 x 800
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    40GB
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    Apple
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I have heard of cases where manufacturers have tuned new drivers for high performance video cards to give better numbers with popular benchmark utilities. Performance under real world conditions are no better, or may even be worse. It is a highly competitive market and manufacturers sometimes consider cheating as being justified, particularly when they think their competitors are doing the same.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Unless they found a security risk or have found better ways to handle CRC checking. Just leave alone. Also stay away from the ones that come through Windows/Microsoft Download.
 

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Sometimes keeping up with the latest drivers can kill your system - black screen. I'm thinking of older graphic cards where windows (especaially 8.1 ) forces upon you the newest drivers that the card can't deal with.
 

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    Windows 8.1 Pro
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    AsRock
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    8GB DDRII
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What is all this bla bla bla? Strollin answered this in the second post (and everyone else then said the same including me)

Don't do it (unless you have a specific problem in which case you wouldn't ask).
 

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    ATI Radeon X1600
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    40GB
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    Apple
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    Defender
For the most part, I leave drivers alone if they are up and working. Only exception is usually a video card.

When I have problems, then I go looking for updated drivers to see if it fixes the problem.

I maintain machines and images at work. We don't Luke to introduce unknowns, we prefer consistency among the builds.
 

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  • OS
    Windows 7
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    Self-Built in July 2009
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    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
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    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
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    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
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    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
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It depends. I usually take a look at the updated drivers. Sometimes they claim improvements in things like battery life, or reducing fan noise, or increasing performance. I tend to install new NVidia drivers because of this, and I check for new BIOS's every few months.

However, I typically don't bother with sound or network drivers unless there's a reason (or I just let Windows Update install whatever it thinks is the latest) unless I need a specific version. For instance, the generic Intel Gigabit NIC drivers don't have all the tuning options that the Intel ones have. this is more important on servers than desktops usually.
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    CPU
    Intel i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte Z77X-UD4 TH
    Memory
    16GB DDR3 1600
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia GTX 650
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    Onboard Audio
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    Auria 27" IPS + 2x Samsung 23"
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    2560x1440 + 2x 2048x1152
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    Corsair m4 256GB, 2 WD 2TB drives
    Case
    Antec SOLO II
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
    Mouse
    Logitech MX
In many cases, if not almost all, drivers for a particular, let's say video card have added hardware it supports rather than real improvements for older ones. Just so they don't have to make and release new drivers for each particular model, manufacturers just pile up number of new drivers, eventually taking some older ones out of the list. Only when conditions for drivers to work in OS changes, you may see some changes and "improvements" to older drivers. That happened for instance during the change from Win8 to 8.1 for older HD4xxx AMD video cards. Drivers for Win8 just stopped working on 8.1 properly and "Black screen with pointer" ensued. Couple of weeks later, AMD modified drivers to work with W8.1 and added "Legacy" in drivers name. (it happened to me, that's why I am using it as an example). That first compatible version was 13.1 and it worked, later on 13.4 and 13.9 showed up and when I installed them, version of actual driver for my GPU (can be seen in device manager) stayed same, only changes were for control center. So, updating to newest version did not make any difference to driver itself even with newer version number.
 

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    Windows 8.1 Pro
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    Home made
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    Asus Prime x470 Pro
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    16GB Kingston 3600
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    Raidmax
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    CCM Nepton 140xl
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    40/2 Mbps
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    Firefox
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    WD
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