Is there any need for motherboard drivers with Windows 7?


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Hi Guys,

Got a simple question which I can't seem to find an answer to anywhere on the web.

I recently downloaded the Windows 7 RC1 and installed it on my computer which has a gigabyte motherboard (GA-MA78GM-S2H) Rev 1.1..this is the mATX board with the 780G ati chipset.

Once I installed Windows 7 RC1 and checked the Device manager, it seemed everything was already well and running, apart from the audio drivers (which I installed myself).

I am now wondering...do i need to install any chipset drivers?

I know that the motherboard has sata and raid functionality...however..i don't have any use for them as I still use my old IDE HDDs with an IDE card installed ..so do i still need to install any drivers for the motherboard?

Is there any advantage of installing the AMD Chipset Driver (which includes chipset\sata raid\vga driver)? Btw...i also don't even use the onboard VGA as I have a separate Nvidia Card installed...so..what do you think?

Note..when I extract the .exe chipset driver file...i get only 2 folders (RAID, VGA)

I grabbed the file from the Gigabtye Product Drivers Page

Also note...under Device Manager...there is also no message of something not being installed...etc.

Thanks for your opinions.

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in Windows Vista and previows SOs i had to manually install the motherboard drivers such as chipset,ethernet and stuff like that. With Windows 7 everything is installed automatically so i usually leave it up that way without installing anything further. If there are important driver updates Windows Update will take care of it,the only thing I manually update is video driver.

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Id stick with W7 based drivers unless newer ones are released after the build date of W7 RC, I noticed that theres new Intel chipset drivers* but I havnt updated them as of yet, W7 even saw my Raid0 setup therefore I left it as is with no issues.

Only drivers Ive manually added were for items not included within W7 DVD (MS Keyboard, Mouse & webcam drivers & vista 64 Nvidia drivers as W7 betas were dog awful performance for me)

*duh just noticed your AMD/ATI chipset, if it works and shows no issues in Dev manager, leave as is. :o)

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short answer, no.

longer answer, you can do if you want to. if you have a very new motherboard that the manufacturer are still releasing updates to then it might be worth a shot..

what i personally do is install the bare minimum drivers manually that i can in order to get rid of errors in the device manager.. so in your case, just leave it :)

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I just bought a new PC this month (AMJD64) and i did install W7 RC1 and it did install most drivers but I went ahead and installed CD with the MB drivers. All went well and then I went to WUD and it offered me more updated drivers. After a couple of reboots all is well. So to answer your question, yes and no. W7 does a lot better at handling devices and I guess M$ payed attention to my Beta report about not supporting legacy and new drivers because before I bought this new rig I had W7 on my PC that is +5 years of age and it installed my legacy drivers without a hitch. It even ran smoothly and quite fast.

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I left mine was there were installed by W7. I have a gigabyte ga-m57 and there are no recent drivers for it, so im guess W7 ones are healthier.

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I also leave mine the way it is, the only thing I manually installed on RC1 was the touchpad driver to get the scrolling functionality. Had to reinstall the fingerprint driver but that's because the one offered on Windows Update wasn't complete (and so crashed).

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The drivers included in Win 7 (7127), for the Mobo chipset, onboard Realtek HD Audio/LAN and my ATI4850 are the same revisions as those offered by the respective companies. Until there are more recent offerings I can't see the need to install anything else.

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I have the GA-MA790GP-UD4H most of the Win 7 drivers work fine for me. I did have to install the raid driver when trying to install win 7 as it did not pick it up. I also updated my video drivers. other than that everything else is win 7 drivers.

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I use the default chipset drivers that come win7 on my gaming desktop and laptop and they work fine. I also use the default sound drivers/wifi drivers on my laptop.

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As others have said, there's probably no real benefit to installing chipset drivers from your manufacturer unless they are brand new and designed for 7.

Using the drivers provided with 7 for my Intel Q35 chipset, i'm able to do everything from playing games to watching dvds.

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