Gigabyte Mobo, seeking help with Drivers

[Raklutz]

I have just acquired a 2009-ish era custom PC, based on a Q6600 CPU, speccs as follows:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0
Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R P45 Mobo
EVGA 9800GTX+ SC 512MB (DDR3)
Kingston 4x2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 HyperX Memory
Maxtor 500GB HDD 7200rpm, 32MB cache
Cti 700ub PSU
Coolermaster Elite 330 case
Win7 Home Premium

I have several questions regarding Mobo/chipset drivers, which area is something of a black box to me. The PC runs fine at the moment, with existing drivers (but see (1) below). I have found the GA webpage with driver downloads (chipset, LAN, audio and SATA) for my board. My questions are:

1) How do I tell which drivers are currently installed? I’m struggling to make sense of what I see in Device Mgr, and I’m completely unable to relate it to anything in the drivers (xxx.exe) that I’ve downloaded – so I don’t know if the latest GA drivers are in fact already installed.

2 Will it be a problem if I try to install a driver that is already installed? That is, if the current drivers are in fact up to date, will it be a problem if I try to install the same thing over the top?

3) Assuming I install the downloaded GA drivers from their xxx.exe files, will I then be able to use the “roll back drivers” function in windows DevMgr if any of the GA driver installs causes problems?

4) Do I need to install the SATA drivers at all? I’m currently running 1 hard drive, and plan to add a further 2 (all will be SATA II drives). I will not be using any form of RAID.

5) Should I bother updating Mobo/chipset drivers at all? Is there any great benefit in installing the latest GA drivers, compared to what I think is the current driver set sourced as generic Win7 drivers during the OS install?

I would sure appreciate any advice/pointers

 

[ngrego]

1. You can see the driver version if you open Device Manager and right click the device in question and select Properties > Driver. There should be a driver version on the tab that you can refer to.
2. Usually the driver installer will tell you that the driver you are installing is older than the one already installed. If it doesn't it shouldn't crash your system or anything but generally its not a good thing. It like down-grading.
3. If you install the correct drivers from GA you will not have any problems. If something does go wrong though, you do have the option to rollback.
4. No sata drivers are not needed. When you install the chipset drivers the Storage controller will be installed and that does all the rest.
5. The Chipset driver is pretty important. Manufacturers usually build their own drivers specific to the mobos they market. The driver they publish should have some extras specific to GA that MS doesn't bother to put in.

I would check Intel out first. They have a nice hardware detection tool that will tell you if the drivers are old and if they need updating. You can choose to update at Intel directly or go to GA for the driver specific to your mobo. I would probably choose Intel over MS for a driver that important.
That HW detection tool will also find any other intel stuff on there and offer updates for that too.

Generally the chipset driver is important and should (for me) be the first driver installed on any new build.

 

[Raklutz]

Hi ngrego, thanks for taking the time to advise.

In the Dev Mgr, under "System Devices", I have 28 entries. most of which I don't understand. I guess entries like "Intel 4 series Chipset PCI Express Route Port" and "Intel 4 series Chipset Processor to I/O controller" are (some) of the chipset drivers? These are all microsoft drivers. I can't find a web resource that details what these individual entries are.

I checked the Intel chipset ID utility - sadly it doesn't run in Win7 64-bit.

I'm reassured that it looks like I can't do irreversible damage.

 

[ngrego]

The intel Driver update utility, not chipset ID utility. Sorry if there was any confusion.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect

Open the link on IE it runs best there. Also if it asks to install an activex allow it to do so then run again. Due to the security settings on win 7 you may need to press Check your system button 2 - 3 times for it to complete. I also have Win7 64bit and I do this check myself every so often, so it will definitely run on your OS.

In Device manager as you pointed out, there are way too many system devices to check one by one but most of them are part of the chipset and installed when you install the chiset driver.

Check out my link and I believe you will find what you are looking for.