Mobo drivers - Generally, Which Ones To Go For?

[sammy5gs]

Ok. At the risk of sounding noobish, I just have to ask a question. For background. I have two rigs up right now. One is an Intel P4 based (Abit IS7-E mobo), and the other is an AMD Barton setup (Shuttle AN35N-Ultra mobo). Both mobos have onboard sound, nics, etc. The Abit mobo operates on the 865PE chipset, while the Shuttle uses the Nforce2 chipset.

Now, each manufacturer has it own list of drivers under their respective support pages. However, I have noticed that I can get updated chipset drivers from locations other than the mobo manufacturer. For example, on the Intel rig, I can go to Intel.com, and get the latest INF driver package, which is newer than the chipset driver that Abit provides on their website. On my Shuttle, I can go to Nvidia and get the latest nforce2 chipset drivers out there, which is by far newer than the mobo manufacturers.

Question (finally) - Should I just stick to the mobo's website for chipset drivers, and not go to Intel/Nvidia for their chipset drivers, or can I utilize those drivers and they should probably lead to better performance? Also, as a side question, both mobos have onboard sound by Realtek. I know that Realtek just dropped some new drivers on their site, but as with the chipset drivers, those are much newer than what is on the mobo's website.

Just looking for thoughts/guidance on this. Thanks!

[JigPu]

According to the mobo manufacturers, it's better to stick with the drivers on their site since you're pretty much garunteed it will work. However, I'd have to say that drivers from the chipset manufacturer should also work almost all the time. It should be fine to use their driver versions.

For sound, I believe it's totaly OK to just get the latest drivers from anywhere. I'm not sure, but I don't see how the physical hardware would differ enough in just the sound portion of the motherboard to make it not work with other drivers.

JigPu

[leggysoe]

According to the mobo manufacturers, it's better to stick with the drivers on their site since you're pretty much garunteed it will work. However, I'd have to say that drivers from the chipset manufacturer should also work almost all the time. It should be fine to use their driver versions.