ASUS supplied drivers necessary for best performance?

[ltessier]

Good evening all,

I recently blew all the hard-earned cash I've been saving up on a gaming rig that I am, so far, extremely pleased with. This is my second build and I think I've had just as much fun researching, picking out, and ordering parts as I have building and using it thus far. Here's the grand sum of things:

1. Thermaltake Level 10 case
2. AMD FX-8150 Black Edition CPU
3. Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9 RAM (total of 16gb)
4. ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard
5. 4x Seagate ST3500641AS 500gb hard drive, in RAID 0 configuration
6. OCZ ZX Series 1000W PSU
7. 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Superclocked, in 2-way SLI
8. Antec Kuhler h2o 620 closed-loop LCS

I know a lot of people might disagree with my choice of components and I respect your opinions wholeheartedly, but please, that's not why I'm posting. I built my previous rig with an ASUS board as well, and in an effort to follow all 'the rules,' installed what seemed like eighty different programs and drivers off the ASUS website and DVD that came with my board, and they really seemed to slow my computer down.

What I want to know is if this is really necessary. Are none of the drivers that ASUS provides critical for performance? Are some of them? All of them? I haven't had any compatibility issues with Windows 7 x64 so far so my concern is really about performance. And if anyone has any tips about whether AI Suite II's overclocking software or AMD OverDrive is better, I would appreciate those too.

Thank you all so much in advance!

 

[drums101]

what will usually give you the best performance is the most up to date drivers....if its a driver that only comes from ASUS your best bet is to look online for the latest version of the driver on the asus website...but really none of that software is needed to make the machine run....what you should do is install windows and let windows install some of the little less important drivers and then the ones that windows does not install you can pick off of the drivers download page on asus's website....you do not need to install all of the programs from asus to make your machine work just the essential drivers

 

[clutchc]

I think you just loaded a bunch of bloatware. The only drivers needed for your system as stated above are the chipset driver for the motherboard, the sound card driver, the LAN driver (if you're using the built-in Ethernet LAN), and your graphic driver for the GTX 680s. I would uninstall as much as possible. Or beter yet, start over with a fresh install of Win7.

 

[ltessier]

I think you just loaded a bunch of bloatware. The only drivers needed for your system as stated above are the chipset driver for the motherboard, the sound card driver, the LAN driver (if you're using the built-in Ethernet LAN), and your graphic driver for the GTX 680s. I would uninstall as much as possible. Or beter yet, start over with a fresh install of Win7.

Fortunately, I haven't put any of it on my new system yet, but thank you both for your advice! The sound and LAN are actually working well without an external driver, but I'll definitely get that chipset one loaded. Thanks again!

 

[ltessier]

Best answer selected by ltessier.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr