asus and confusing assortment of drivers on asus x99 deluxe board

[karios525]

Hi,

Since doing a fresh install for windows 10 on my asus x99 deluxe mainboard (intel 5960x) I followed the link to asus main page for my specific mainboard, selected windows 10 64 bit and started to go through available drivers and found myself a bit lost as they are named so badly its tough determining if I need two or one driver at points, so for my questions....

1) Which drivers do I actually need on top of those already installed by windows 10, as most exclamation marks in device manager are related to pci communications

2) Are the generic windows usb drivers enough? As I do have two usb 3.1 ports on the mainboard via an expansion card, and there are no windows 10 listed usb drivers on asus site

3) on asus site there are both an MEI and chipset driver, both dated 7/8 which I asume that I should install on top of existing windows drivers?

4) There is both a realtek and a separate audio driver listed, the audio driver listed as WHQL dated 08/07 so out of date and should be ignored I assume? The realtek driver isn't listed as WHQL but dated 28/07 should I install or is there a link to a more up to date driver I should use?
( I use a separate lg soundplate synced wirelessly to my led tv connected to pc via hdmi so won't really be using realtek just want maximum stability)

5)intel lan driver dated 06/08 and gigabit ethernet driver dated 28/7 do i need them or are windows drivers good enough?

6) When it comes to sata drivers asus have the asmedia driver dated 01/09 and irst dated 07/08 are they both needed?

7) I assume that windows bluetooth and wifi drivers are enough and don't require any specific software updates, as 28/07 is the latest bluetooth driver listed on asus relevant driver page, and wi fi driver dated 28/07.

I still get bsod using the wifi adaptor which plugs into the mainboard via three gold sockets at the back, if using bit torrent but not if I use a usb wireless adaptor, not a big issue as the usb does the job, just would be nice to fix, lol.

Final question, another oddity. Preparing for a data migration to a new seagate 2tb expansion portable drive, I kept getting i/o errors during transfer with one usb socket, tested with other drives no issue. Switched to a different usb 3.0 sockets works fine, done the usual checking for errors, formatted correctly (several times just to be sure lol), it's not using gpt boot table so still with mbr. After installing a couple of files I tested on my wd hd tv media player, wouldn't read it no matter what I tried, plugged it into my samsung tv read it fine, files played correctly, any idea what might be the cause as it doesn't appear to be a faulty drive....

Many thanks to all kind enough to reply as most importantly I want to get it right with driver installation on a fresh install before I go any further, and am dubious on 'driver updated' apps even though I never had any real issue with drive the life, unless there are any suitable recommendations?

Again thanks for reading and hopefully responding.

Dave.

 

[Slashgeek]

1) Get the chipset drivers, these are quite important.

2) You can use Windows 8.1 drivers in Windows 10, they have a relatively high degree of success as long as they did not carry over from an upgrade installation.

3) Yes

4) Still update your Realtek HD audio drivers to the latest Windows 10-compatible version, for stability (www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/DownloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false) For HDMI audio, update your graphics card drivers.

5) As long as they work, you'll be fine. Incompatible network adapter drivers are responsible for many crashes, but the built-in Windows ones are okay.

6) As long as you are not experiencing SATA issues, or getting BSODs related to file system or disk reading, you won't need to update the SATA drivers. Note that if you experience lower-than-normal speeds, you should update.

7) Get those drivers. The built-in drivers in Windows 10 are not always dated the same as Windows 10's release date. Some of the drivers built-in are older.

 

[Slashgeek]

Thanks for the response Slashgeek, I think I was a little unclear in regards to usb as I meant are the usb drivers which come installed with windows 10 good enough? Followed the link you kindly provided, the latest audio drivers are older than the asus ones.....

Yes, the generic USB drivers are enough, unless you don't get the expected bandwidth from them.

 

[karios525]

Slashgeek

Ok heres what I have gone with on the asus site.....the chipset and mei drivers as asus realtek driver seems more up to date than realteks (just the time it took them to package it I guess?lol) the asmedia driver as it is dated this month, I assume irst is just the intel rapid storage controler? Unecessary i assume? the wifi driver as to bluetooth there are two drivers, the bigger of the two always fails installing so I assume that is due to windows having more up to date components in it's own generic drivers? The smaller bluetooth driver worked last time I tried and the wifi driver, all sounds ok for my clean install? Have you ever used drive the life in the past? As it did find and update all my generic drivers without any form of registration or payment so unsure how they make any money, cnet seems to recommend as well though, perhaps after installing the asus drivers just use it to run a scan, see if it finds anything I need updating? Or better just to leave alone, will update nvidia driver as well

 

[Slashgeek]

Slashgeek

Ok heres what I have gone with on the asus site.....the chipset and mei drivers as asus realtek driver seems more up to date than realteks (just the time it took them to package it I guess?lol) the asmedia driver as it is dated this month, I assume irst is just the intel rapid storage controler? Unecessary i assume? the wifi driver as to bluetooth there are two drivers, the bigger of the two always fails installing so I assume that is due to windows having more up to date components in it's own generic drivers? The smaller bluetooth driver worked last time I tried and the wifi driver, all sounds ok for my clean install? Have you ever used drive the life in the past? As it did find and update all my generic drivers without any form of registration or payment so unsure how they make any money, cnet seems to recommend as well though, perhaps after installing the asus drivers just use it to run a scan, see if it finds anything I need updating? Or better just to leave alone, will update nvidia driver as well

Avoid the IRST drivers unless you are using RAID. I have never used Drive the Life, as I prefer to update my drivers manually. You can scan for driver updates if you want, but as long as you have a stable system with the latest-dated manufacturer drivers, you are all good to go. Also definitely update the nVIDIA driver.

 

[karios525]

Thanks for you're help will do a fresh install and hopefully won't have any more problems