A question about drivers update

[CVR]

Hi,

I have a motherboard from Gigabyte (GA-Z270N-Gaming 5), with Intel chipset Z270N and Intel Graphics HD 630. The drivers for my graphic card and chipset are updated more often in the Intel website than in Gigabyte's web and usually driver versions from Gigabyte's are older.

My question is: should I wait for Gigabyte to update the drivers or should I use the drivers from Intel's website?

What do you do? Is it the same?

Thanks.

[n_scott_pearson]

For a Desktop motherboard (and specifically NOT for a laptop or embedded design), there's little chance that this driver has been modified (customized) by the ODM. In this case,

• The advantage of using drivers downloaded from the ODM's site is that they (should) have validated these driver versions (for compatibility, etc.).
• The advantage of using drivers downloaded from Intel's site, on the other hand, is that, if they're newer, they will contain fixes for identified issues.

Hope this helps,

...S

[CVR]

Thanks for your answer Scott but is it safe downloading from Intel's site? How much ODM's drivers are modified? I mean, right now Gigabyte still updates the drivers but they will stop some time...

[n_scott_pearson]

Usually, the only time that the ODM actually needs to modify the driver is if it is a laptop and this laptop includes two graphics solutions (i.e. the embedded Intel HD Graphics subsystem and an NVIDIA or AMD HD Graphics subsystem). In this case, the Intel HD Graphics solution is used for some capabilities (like DRM) and the NVIDIA/AMD solution is used for others. Since the two solutions cannot operate at the same time (because of common register addresses, etc.), the two drivers must be modified to support the capability for switching from one solution to the other.

...S

[CVR]

Thank you so much for the explanation Scott. All my doubts are gone. Cheers