Is there any need to install nvidia motherboard drives on a vista system?

[nippyjun]

I have an evga 680i sli (not that the motherboard matters for these questions other than the fact that it's an nvidia mobo) and use vista 32 ultimate.

I never installed any of the nforce mobo drivers. I assumed that the drivers built into vista are fine. Am i wrong on this?

Also even without having nforce drivers installed windows udpate shows an nvidia sata driver optional update. Is there any need to install this one?

thanks.

 

[JaBro999]

I believe that you can get better/more up to date drivers from nVidia that will not be automatically provided in Vista. Folks say they get better performance and stability with updated nVidia drivers over the default drivers offered in Vista.

For my own build (it's old, I know ...) with an nForce 4 chipset, I went to the forums at nforcershq and downloaded one of the MB driver packs that some of the members put together for Vista users:
http://www.nforcershq.com/

I did this because nVidia does not put together updated drivers specifically for the old nForce 4 chipset any more (though they still can be used - go to the forum for more info). But, nVidia probably has the latest nForce driver updates for your much newer motherboard directly on its website. Check out nVidia's web site, and also see what the latest news is in the nforcershq forum.

 

[MTDEW]

I usually install the latest mobo drivers from Nvidia's site.
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

And any updates Windows has for the mobo on their site. (but only if there are any AFTER the Nvidia driver update)
Ie: Yes , i'd install the optional sata driver at windows update if its still listed after installing the drivers from Nvidia's site.

But you are correct, on a clean windows install , ive installed Nvidias drivers or just the ones that windows and windows update has and i had no issues either way. (i have a 780i board BTW)
And i really havent seen a performance increase or decrease using either method.

While doing my most recent clean install and creating an image of my clean install partition, i used the latest drivers from Nvidias site, since its their chipset i figured those were the better option for me.

 

[tcsenter]

680i was released around the same time Vista went RTM, and is too new to have mature in-box driver support. I would install the latest NVIDIA package, except for any optional features like NAM or Media Shield. Windows 7 should bring mature in-box support for NForce 6xx.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I know installing their SATA controller driver makes my sata hdds' smart status, and temperatures disappear from monitoring programs such as speedfan.