Graphics Drivers and Manufacturers

DCOmega · 31 May 2017

I got my Dell Inspiron laptop this past Christmas and the graphics driver installed for the A8-7410 APU w/Radeon R5 Graphics is from 2015. So is it the norm for Manufacturers to just install custom divers from the past and never update them? I have no issues I'm just a little curious to how this all works...

Thanks

RoasterMen · 31 May 2017

For laptops, yes. For desktops, Not necessary.

dalchina · 31 May 2017

Hi, the typical story is that laptop manufacturers customise a generic driver from the supplier for the laptop's particular configuration. Thus the guideline is that you should always get your laptop's device drivers from the manufacturer of the laptop.

This is likely to be older than the latest generic driver from the supplier of the driver.

MS, in Win 10, takes responsibility for delivering your PC's drivers, thus it maintains an extensive database of appropriate drivers. However, occasionally, with some older PCs, it seems that database can be (rather understandably if you think about it) incomplete, and very occasionally a driver may even be missing after installing Windows. This means you have to try to find a solution.

So what happens when the manufacturer only provides drivers to, say, Win 8.1, and someone upgrades their (non-approved) laptop to Win 10? Perhaps remarkably in most cases this still works. However there is a risk of incompatibility, either at a level immediately obvious to the user, or at a lower level (e.g. thermal management issues).

So is it true that you must follow the line that you should only use manufacturer approved drivers?
Yes, inasmuch as if you want tested and approved reliable performance.

However, as I've said, if you venture into untested and unverified territory and install an OS not approved by your manufacturer, clearly you may or may not be using manufacturer approved drivers.

Now in some cases, the driver supplied by the manufacturer may not include features available from the hardware or driver supplier.

For example, I wanted to find a way to get sound enhancements- equaliser etc- on my PC using a Realtek driver. I found that downloading the one from Realtek, rather than my laptop manufacturer, gave me those extra features. It works perfectly well.

Nvidia seems to have its own update procedure for its drivers.

DCOmega · 31 May 2017

dalchina said:

Hi, the typical story is that laptop manufacturers customise a generic driver from the supplier for the laptop's particular configuration. Thus the guideline is that you should always get your laptop's device drivers from the manufacturer of the laptop.

This is likely to be older than the latest generic driver from the supplier of the driver.

MS, in Win 10, takes responsibility for delivering your PC's drivers, thus it maintains an extensive database of appropriate drivers. However, occasionally, with some older PCs, it seems that database can be (rather understandably if you think about it) incomplete, and very occasionally a driver may even be missing after installing Windows. This means you have to try to find a solution.

So what happens when the manufacturer only provides drivers to, say, Win 8.1, and someone upgrades their (non-approved) laptop to Win 10? Perhaps remarkably in most cases this still works. However there is a risk of incompatibility, either at a level immediately obvious to the user, or at a lower level (e.g. thermal management issues).

So is it true that you must follow the line that you should only use manufacturer approved drivers?
Yes, inasmuch as if you want tested and approved reliable performance.

However, as I've said, if you venture into untested and unverified territory and install an OS not approved by your manufacturer, clearly you may or may not be using manufacturer approved drivers.

Now in some cases, the driver supplied by the manufacturer may not include features available from the hardware or driver supplier.

For example, I wanted to find a way to get sound enhancements- equaliser etc- on my PC using a Realtek driver. I found that downloading the one from Realtek, rather than my laptop manufacturer, gave me those extra features. It works perfectly well.

Nvidia seems to have its own update procedure for its drivers.

I understand. Thank you for the explanation :)