Very confused about which drivers I need

Illuminati Izzy · 04 Feb 2016

Hello, and thanks for reading my thread. I have the gigabyte motherboard GA-H81M-DS2V and Windows 10. When you go on the 'Support and Download', 'Drivers', 'Windows 10 64-bit' on the Gigabyte website, it gives you a list of drivers that you should install for that motherboard. However, upon looking some of these drivers up, they appear to be for Intel NUC products, which I do not have. For example, the Intel Management Engine Interface 11.0.0.1158 appears on the driver list for the GA-H81M-DS2V, but, when you look at it on the Intel website, it seems to be for Intel NUC Products. The link below will show this.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/dow...-for-Intel-NUC

Therefore, I am unsure if I can trust Gigabyte's driver information. As well as this, I have another problem to do with my graphics driver. I have Intel HD Graphics 4600, and the latest version of this is shown the link below (20.19.15.4300).

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/dow...15-40-4th-Gen-

However, my PC seems to want a graphics driver that is for Intel NUC Products (20.19.15.4331). I can not find a page on the Intel website with this download, so I will have to put a Softpedia link instead.

http://drivers.softpedia.com/blog/in...1-498194.shtml

This is actually happening with all of the drivers on the Gigabyte webstie. The Intel INF Installation for the GA-H81M-DS2V on the Gigabyte website is version 10.1.1.8, but when I look it up I can find no such driver, and any Chipset installation on the Intel website only goes up to Windows 8 64-bit. The Realtek driver says its version R4.31 on Gigabyte, but on the Realtek page its only on R2.79.

I am very confused and stressed about what I should do because I just did a complete reset of my PC (delete all the files, clean the drive, reinstall Windows 10 64-bit). Can someone please help me and instruct me which drivers I should get? Thank you.

philc43 · 04 Feb 2016

Actually you may find that you already have drivers installed by windows 10 which are working fine. Do you have any devices which are showing as not working in Device Manager (yellow exclamation mark)?

Illuminati Izzy · 06 Feb 2016

philc43 said:

Actually you may find that you already have drivers installed by windows 10 which are working fine. Do you have any devices which are showing as not working in Device Manager (yellow exclamation mark)?

No, but I want the most up-to-date versions of my drivers.

Steve C · 06 Feb 2016

I would install the Gigabyte drivers but only if they are a newer version than already installed by Windows.

Barman58 · 06 Feb 2016

You have to realize that with motherboard based drivers the board manufacturer will often take a component manufacturer's driver and tweak this to work better with their hardware.

Because of this the best driver is usually the latest from the board manufacturer, even though the component manufacturer may release newer generic drivers.

My rules of engagement in these circumstances are to use the Equipment manufacturers drivers as a first choice, that means for external hardware, printers Etc, I use the printer manufacturers drivers, but if a component is on a motherboard I use the motherboard manufacturer's drivers.

If there are issues with the driver I will consider updating to the latest driver to cure an issue, but the old adage If it ain't broke, dont fix it is always good advice.

the Microsoft drivers are often a useful baseline option but as they are usually limited in functionality they are rarely ideal.

I would never under any circumstances use drivers from a third party supplier such as softpedia, who often add little extras into their downloads