AMD mobility driver updates - do I really need them?

I wondered what people's take on this is. How essential is it to keep updating the GPU drivers? I have an Alienware M17rx3 laptop Sandybridge with switchable GPU (AMD and Intel). The main GPU is the AMD Radeon 6970M. When I got the machine almost four years ago I was religious about updating the AMD drivers. It came with Dell's own driver (based on catalyst 11.5 I believe). Updating the drivers due to the presence of switchable GPU & various laptop specific features was a PITA. Really like playing russian roulette. I used to get lucky using a link from this forum and it was always in the format of a direct download like this '12-1_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe' (does that over the top direct link still do the rounds?) and installing over the top. But most people had nightmares losing the switchable ability or function to control screen brightness via the Alienware hot keys etc etc

Anyway now I have a kind of 'if it ain't broke then don't fix it' attitude to drivers. Plus I got so fed up of the constant driver updates. Every single month, seemed like overkill. AMD seemed to make the process very tricky for us all. And also I was always bricking it over the loss of functionality. So as a result I stopped updating them when I reached Catalyst 12.1. Everything works ok. I know it's an older driver but do I really need to be worrying about being so out of date? Things have moved on and it seems if I attempted the install now to latest GPU it's going to be pretty horrific. As I use a cache SSD (dataplex) which absolutely hates crashes/unclean shutdowns I can ill afford a temperamental process. I noticed even Dell has a more updated 6970m driver than 12.1, looks like it came out sometime in 2013. Can find very little info on it and how it performed for people who used it but the brief snippets I have found suggest it was pretty unstable and poor performing. So I reasoned it better to stick with 12.1 that I have. I rarely benchmark anymore but on the old 3dmark 06 my setup knocks out a very creditable 19,500 marks.

I haven't played many games in a long time. Around early 2012 my drivers (12.1) coped well with all the latest releases. Do they stand a chance with some of the more recent games. I'm not bothered about games running at 99999 frames a second. An adequate frame rate is all I need. I would hope that a game running on direct x would work whatever driver package I am on as after all AMD 12.1 does support direct x versions upto 11. Do many of you play any of the more recent games on older driver versions (maybe even still using the OEM drivers that shipped with your laptop or desktop)?

Rather than updating over a driver that already works well, are there driver files/dlls that can just be dropped into a games install location so that the game (and only this game) uses it? I think I saw, once upon a time, some of that going on with Rage (seems a much simpler thing that going through a whole driver update). Hope that makes sense.
Cheers,
Wayne

 

You will have to update drivers to play newer games.. 12.1 is like 3 years old now.. AMD releases drivers every 2-3 months now.. Definetly update..

 

Ok thanks. That's a shame, everything I have runs fantastic on 12.1 drivers. I would of hoped newer games would maybe just run a few fps less or missing some fandanged features that are difficult detect by naked eye. It's only because I bought a few games on steam recently and I worried they may not run on 12.1 when and if I ever get to downloading them. I wonder how people on stock drivers get on as I believe the latest are possibly a derivation of 12.1. I think my next machine is going to be a desktop as the whole mobility driver process is pretty difficult

 

You can always get a machine without switchable graphics... I have always evaded that concept and will keep doing so for as long as I can

 

mobility driver process is not difficult, it is actually very easy. DDU uninstall everything, download latest intel graphics driver and latest AMD radeon driver. Install radeon first, followed by intel. reboot, make sure both cards are recognized in dev manager with no issues. Reboot into discrete only mode, allow for proper detection, reboot, should be fine. really there is no problem here, everything has been dandy since 2013 as far as drivers are concerned.

 

DDU is display driver uninstaller in case the OP doesn't know..

 

Ok thanks for feedback guys. Just couple more questions - actually locating the latest AMD mobility reference drivers. AMDs site seems to always sway to desktop. A useful link circa catalyst 11.5 to 12.2 used to rear its head in this very forum for direct download. I'd hate to try wrong ones given my cache SSD setup and its nature of going awry in an unclean shutdown or system crash. I might try installing over the top if I can pluck the courage as that's what I did 3 or 4 years ago.

I would be very interested though to hear of anyone that uses the dell stock drivers which I believe are just an adapted version of my own 12.1 driver. Do they actually manage to run any of the more recent games from say the last year or two? I'm not expecting super fps but if I can at least run some albeit with reduced settings/resolutions I might just avoid the stress and hold out another year or two when I can afford a newer machine and hopefully windows 10 is settled

Cheers
Wayne

 

Please just download these for AMD:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

And these for intel:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24696/Intel-HD-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-8-1-64-bit

Install overtop.