Important Question Regarding Drivers

_TheD0ct0r_

Commendable
Apr 19, 2016
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So im building my friend a new PC (his first time building one) And his motherboard is an MSI Z97 GAMING 5. I have a few questions about the On-board driver installation however:

1. After installing them, should I go to the motherboards website and download the newer versions?

2. One of the drivers is the VGA driver. Is this the graphics card driver? Because if it is, should I ignore it and just go to GeForce.com and get them from there? And If I already installed the On-Board VGA driver but want to go to the actual GeForce Driver, will it auto detect the existing on-board VGA driver and remove it to make sure no issues occur?
 
Solution


You're starting with a brand new OS install, right?
If so, the only thing that might be there is the default Windows 'drivers'. Which are of no consequence.

Mark RM

Admirable
yes just go to NVidia and download the newest driver, if you install the one from the CD or MSI website it will just upgrade you anyhow on an automatic basis.

The Intel on board video and add on video card will co exist.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Actually, knowing the parts list in advance, you should go get all of the newest drivers in advance. No need to wait until later.
Save to a USB stick, and install from that.
 
Always use the motherboards driver DVD and install the Chipset driver first before anything else.
Restart.
Then install all the other drivers and restart.
Go to the selective GPU manufacturer specific model and install the latest drivers in Your case: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx
Restart

Do a Windows update, install and restart
Repeat Windows update until there are no more updates.

After that you have checked that everything works, you can go the the motherboards website and check for newer drivers.
Best regards from Sweden
 
Proper set up procedure:

1. Install all hardware and cables. However:

a) if ya multiple storage devices, connect the SAT data cable to boot drive only.
b) Do not connect ethernet cable

2. Install Windows

3. Stop Windows Update from ever installing hardware drivers ... just google " Stop Windows Update [insert your OS here] from ever installing hardware drivers".

4. If you have Windows 10, and you don't want it tracking you, install Spybot Antibeacon

5. If you have Win 7 and you don't want Windows tracking you or Win10 upgrade stuff, Shout and I will give you a list of KBs not to install.

6. Install all drivers / utilities from the CDs that came with your hardware. two reasons:

a) establish as as bought working condition (or non working) ... important for warranty / tech support issues.
b) sometimes you get bonus software / utilities / etc with license keys that are not included in downloaded updates.

7. Run Windows Update (see step 5) as many times as it takes.

8. Visit manufacturer's web sites and install updated BIOS, drivers utilities

9. Connect other storage devices

10. The VGA driver is for the Intel Graphics (IGP) ... the nVidia driver is for the discrete card. There is no issue having both installed, tho you can turn IGP off in the BIOS if you later choose to.
 
There is no issue having both installed, tho you can turn IGP off in the BIOS if you later choose to.
Yes there is some issues whit this.
for example if one has Adobe Premier - it will not activate hardware acceleration and cannot utilize the GPU for renderings, even AutoCad will struggle with this.
Also another driver to install and will slow the startup a little bit and it will use some memory.

And frankly, If one has a motherboard with in build graphics and a discrete graphics card, there are today not any viable benefits to have them both enabled.
In the future however, when more game developers decide to use Windows DirectX12 to its full extent, then among other things multiple graphics from different sources (not Sli nor crossfire) will perhaps gaining performance, but that is not of today.

Best regards from Sweden

 

_TheD0ct0r_

Commendable
Apr 19, 2016
114
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1,710


so dont use the discs at all and just install the newest drivers from the website via download?

 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Yes.
Either get them before and save on a USB stick, or, once you have the LAN driver installed and have connectivity, direct from the manufacturer(s).
 

_TheD0ct0r_

Commendable
Apr 19, 2016
114
0
1,710


Ok, but I do assume downloading and installing the latest drivers replaces the old ones to stop any conflicts correct? And as for the VGA driver/ Graphics driver, i assume the PC is smart enough to know which one is used for what?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


You're starting with a brand new OS install, right?
If so, the only thing that might be there is the default Windows 'drivers'. Which are of no consequence.
 
Solution


Can't speak to Premier but can speak to AutoCAD

1. We use AutoCAD on a laptop for field work, which via Optimus technology uses BOTH the IGP and discrete nVidia GFX ... AutoCAD has no issues with this.

2. AutoCAD is our primary program getting more use than any other. When I built this workstation, initial testing was done on air before I had installed the water blocks on the two GFX cards. After installing the cards, the IGP was not turned off until we began overclocking. There were no issues at all w/ AutoCAD and boot times were identical.

3. Not that i recommend it, but some folks like to use the iGPU for a 2nd monitor to display utilities on a 2nd monitor while gaming on the 1st




See Item 6 in previous post.

a) Many gaming / enthusiast motherboard and other hardware come with extra utilities some of which are "bundled" in with the MoBo cost i.e. Daemon Tools Pro (DTP), DVR Movie Software, etc. The license key is embedded in the install program on the CD. Download DTP and it will cost ya $40. If anything you bought includes such, you won't be able to use the utility / software.

b) When dealing with Tech Support, to get away from the "my job isn't to solve your problem, but to get you off the phone" mindset, ... it is best to establish an "out of the box" working condition. Been there, had to put up with that (Asus).



 

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
I agree with USAFRet, as far as the drivers, more often than not the drivers that come with the moo are already out of date, and could cause conflicts with your hardware. I find it best to download them from the mobos web site and have them ready to go. Saves time and headaches and while getting them also check the BIOS versions and grab the latest while you're there, it's often out of date also. With the continued release of new components no sense in doing twice the work. And if there is a problem, and you call tech support among their first questions will be "Do you have the latest drivers? The latest BIOS?". If there arany utility programs you want/needyou can install from the disk (though they too may be out of date, and are often trial versions, it's worth a look
 

Hi,
Very interesting to hear that about AutoCad.
The version I'm using is an older ver. AutoCad 2013 and that version, as far as I can tell, cannot work with my Intel i7 4790K @4.5GHz IGP Intel® HD Graphics 4600 and my AMD Asus Radeon R9-290 OC
On an Asus Z-97 Deluxe motherboard with 16GB and 2133MHz Cl11 memory's.

What happens is that it will go from hardware acceleration to s/w acceleration - this is really a big difference, as you know.
So I had to shut of the IGP Intel® HD Graphics 4600 in the Bios settings, then - everything is just up to speed.

This is just the same or similar for Adobe CS6 Premiere - they have not yet implemented a fix for this or they will never do?

Best regards from Sweden

 
I have several recent versions ... can confirm it works with every version of AutoCAD going back at least to when IGP was 1st introduced in 2010. Been an AutoCAD user since 1993. And as I said we have been using AutoCAD on laptops since 1996 which of course would include IGP / Nvidia Optimus from 2010 on.

Here's some test results ... as you can see, there difference in performance is miniscule in 2D and more so in 3D as expected but both clearly can do the job.

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Perhaps, it's specific to having an AMD GFX card involved ? I called a few colleagues and searched the web... even called my AutoDesk support center... no one has run into this before.





 

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
In re-reading the above, it also appears as if it's implied that AutoCad uses bot the discrete and the iGPU simultaneously which is not what Optimus does - Optimus is graphics (GPU) switching, i.e. it uses the the discrete GPU when needed and kicks it self over to the iGPU for power savings - which is the intended purpose of Optimus.

Also, yes, you can have the iGPU enabled while using a discrete card(or cards) in a desktop, but keep in mind DRAM may be allocated to the iGPU (you lose it) depending on how the individual mobos BIOS is written, even if you don't use it. I don't know of anybody that leaves it enabled when they have a decent discrete GPU, especially with today's GPUs that can easily handle multiple monitors ;)
 
Better said Optimus is an nVidia **developed** technology, like PhysX Shadowplay, etc. And yes, it does make things easier as you can use auto switching. In the past you had to manually set the laptop to use the IGP or the discreet card and sometimes you had to reboot to switch.

However, with Windows 7, this went away. Win7 allows two GFX drivers to be active at the same time. With Win 7, you CAN use an Nvidia card for PhysX when using an AMD card as the primary. And AMD does now offer switchable GFX.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/94

See last post here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1789209/usage-haswell-igp-discrete-gpu.html

Also
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03008923.pdf

EDIT: I searched again for a "problem" with AMD GFX and couldn't find any ... I can find no reason why multiple GFX drivers can't exist on Win 7 and above.

In the next day or so, I am going to try and run Cadalyst Benchmark with BIOS set to Auto and BIOS set to PCIE and see if there's any performance difference. I 'll note that there is no "disabled" option




 

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Yes, but it has nothing to do with Optimus or the other talked about above, now you're jumping into a whole new arena. I was just trying to explain to all what Optimus is which isn't as appeared to be described earlier - you were talking laptops and Optimus. The charts shown I have no idea what they are about
 

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
As I mentioned it's not clear above you said,

"1. We use AutoCAD on a laptop for field work, which via Optimus technology uses BOTH the IGP and discrete nVidia GFX ... AutoCAD has no issues with this."

Sorry the charts just lost me, you brought Optimus into that there and mentioned maybe it was because of a MAD GPU - that's why I explained Optimus runs on nVidia cards and the switching is allowed by the Copy Engine in their GPUs