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Mobo chipset drivers, how important ?

N

NoobyDoo

Senior member
What exactly does the mobo chipset driver do ? Link to answer will suffice.

I have a Giga GA-P35-DS3L (rev. 2.0) for which no chipset driver (Intel INF installation) is available for Win7. Implications ?
 
The Intel P35 chipset is two years old. I'd be surprised if Windows 7 doesn't have the needed drivers. I've got a couple of P45-based motherboards and haven't loaded any motherboard drivers except what's in W7 RC1.
 
wndows 7 rc found the chipset drivers automatically in my p35-ds3l not sure what the OP is doing. Need more info
 
The chipset is one or more chips that links your CPU to other high and low speed devices such as your graphics adapter, memory, PCI slots, USB devices etc.

so it is indeed very important

blue screens and other strange activities would occur quite often with no INF drivers but those should be automatically installed with windows 7.. if not then automatic updates should do the trick
 
Sorry, wasn't clear in OP. I still don't have 7. I might upgrade from Vista to 7. Just checking for any gotchas.
 
To answer your original question:

In general, if Windows doesn't recognize a device, it simply won't install drivers for it. This won't generally cause crashes. The device just won't work. But it's a major issue if the device is the disk controller. The system can't read the disks. Windows will stop to prevent system damage.

Many devices have alternative, generic, functions. Like all video cards can work in generic VGA mode and IDE controllers can work in generic IDE mode. If Windows recognizes what the device is, but doesn't have specific drivers for the device, Windows will install the generic drivers. The device will function, but likely with fewer features or more slowly than with the device-specific drivers.
 
I have the P35-DS3R; you won't need to install any drivers for Win7. Intel's chipsets use generic drivers in the first place - the only thing their chipset driver package does is install INF files, which tell Windows what class of device any given Device ID represents. In the case of Win7, since it's newer than the P35 chipset it already knows what those devices are.
 
I was actully going to post something similar. I have the DFI bloodIron, and wasn't sure whether I should just use the generic Win7 drivers, or DFI's/Intels, since I thought those might be more optimized.
 
Even video card drivers included in RC is quite recent. Though you're probably better off installing the latest drivers for video, Win 7 comes with ForceWare for G92 variants and Catalyst for RV670. Only the current gen cards (GT200/RV770) are not recognized natively.
 
I have a Gigabyte P35-DS3R and asked pretty much the same question you did in this thread,

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2324144&enterthread=y


Go to the below link and click on the P35 download links for chipset software and intel matrix storage manager. I think the intel matrix storage manager is the same driver that is called "Intel ICH9R/ICH10R Driver" on the Gigabyte site for their motherboards. So if you have a SATA hard drive running in AHCI mode, you will need to download the Intel RAID preinstall driver so Windows 7 will recognize it.

They have a Windows 7 driver for the Intel Raid, but only a Vista 64 bit driver for the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility.


http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-026488.htm

 
You only need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager for RAID operations. Win Vista and Win7 have AHCI drivers, and in AHCI mode Intel's disk controller presents itself as a generic AHCI controller that even Vista knew what to do with.
 
Originally posted by: ViRGE
You only need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager for RAID operations. Win Vista and Win7 have AHCI drivers, and in AHCI mode Intel's disk controller presents itself as a generic AHCI controller that even Vista knew what to do with.
Click to expand...


Vista would not recognize my hard drive when trying to install it, until I loaded the AHCI driver.
 
Originally posted by: sticks435
Not to veer to far OT, but should I be running in AHCI? I'm just using regular IDE setting at the moment.
Click to expand...
I would go with AHCI (Native Command Queuing goodness), but it's not a huge deal. Really there's no reason not to go with it at the moment.

Originally posted by: gigahertz20
Originally posted by: ViRGE
You only need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager for RAID operations. Win Vista and Win7 have AHCI drivers, and in AHCI mode Intel's disk controller presents itself as a generic AHCI controller that even Vista knew what to do with.
Click to expand...


Vista would not recognize my hard drive when trying to install it, until I loaded the AHCI driver.
Click to expand...
And you're sure it wasn't in RAID mode? I have the exact same board, Vista had no problem recognizing it at an AHCI controller.
 
The term "chipset drivers" is pretty much an oxymoron, mostly all they do is contain workarounds for bugs.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
The term "chipset drivers" is pretty much an oxymoron, mostly all they do is contain workarounds for bugs.
Click to expand...
LoL! I love ya, man!

You're officially on my 'AT Buddies List' now... 😀
 
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