When it comes to motherboard & CPU what driver should be worried about?

[bluethunder]

I have been updating the drivers for my USB controllers and chipset controllers through Intel provided .inf files and such. My question is this, do I really need to make sure all the controllers and things of that nature are up to date? Is there any benefit from updating them? Right now I am updating somethings just for the sake of it, very cautiously. I noticed in device manager my cpu (i7 970) has a driver, I figured it did but I have never really heard that talked about, should I update it too? Also is it worth updating marvell 91xx config device and standard ahci 1.0 sata controller(that is what they are called in device manager) they are both listed as having updates in a number of places and I don't think I have ever done anything to update them or it's been awhile. I would like to update everything but I am not sure what is worth being bothered with and what isn't. I don't want to break anything which is why I am mainly skeptical about CPU, marvell, and standard ahci in particular.

 

[TheUnkn0wn]

If it ain't broke don't fix it

 

[Josh Weston]

Visit your motherboard manufacturer's website and track down your motherboard. There should be an option called drivers (or something similar) which'll show you the latest releases. These include chipset drivers, management engines, and everything else that needs to be worried about. This includes anything related to the CPU.

In contrast to TheUnk0wn, generally I advise to update everything to their latest releases.

Below is the link to the motherboard I see in your CPU-Z banner, so I hope that's the right one.

http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/Big-Bang-XPower.html#/?div=Driver&os=Win7 64

Note that i've picked Windows 7 64 bit, as that's pretty much the most common OS, but ensure you update that to your OS if I am mistaken.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Visit your motherboard manufacturer's website and track down your motherboard. There should be an option called drivers (or something similar) which'll show you the latest releases. These include chipset drivers, management engines, and everything else that needs to be worried about. This include anything related to the CPU.

In contrast to TheUnk0wn, generally I advise to update everything to their latest releases.

Below is the link to the motherboard I see in your CPU-Z banner, so I hope that's the right one.

http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/Big-Bang-XPower.html#/?div=Driver&os=Win7 64

Note that i've picked Windows 7 64 bit, as that's pretty much the most common OS, but ensure you update that to your OS if I am mistaken.

+1 to that! Spot on.

 

[bluethunder]

Thank you for the answer Josh Weston!

Would it be okay to use the drivers supplied by Intel and Marvell? Typically the drivers MSI supplies are really outdated.

 

[Excalabur50]

Thank you for the answer Josh Weston!

Would it be okay to use the drivers supplied by Intel and Marvell? Typically the drivers MSI supplies are really outdated.

I tend to tell people to use the drivers supplied by the manufacturer of your motherboard as they are tested on that system before posted on the manufacturers web site and are generally much more stable if you use something else it may not be tested with your system and possibly could cause stability issues better to be safe than sorry

 

[NeverBackDown]

MSI use "Live Update" and i find it very handy. Used it on mine and brothers rig and not one problem. Useful because it gives you everything and even GPU updates but only for non beta drivers.