Alienware GPU Driver question

I was wondering, for Alienware notebooks do you have to install drivers from DELL or can you just go to AMD or Nvidia to install their latest drivers?

 

Depends on the experience level of the user and the particular system.

Generally for most people, the drivers from Dell will give the most trouble-free operation with the easiest install.

For more experienced users, going with Nvidia or AMD drivers is an option if they want to go to the trouble and can deal with any bugs or issues that pop up, which can sometimes be the case, especially with new drivers.

There are also custom drivers out there, tweaks of the Nvidia/AMD drivers that sometimes work better and give improvements in certain games or overall image quality, or even builds just for certain notebooks or GPUS.

With the latest generation of notebooks and the switchable graphics, integrated GPUs, Nvidia's Optimus, and all that, the graphics drivers are a bit more complex, and sometimes more work to deal with than the single graphics driver for earlier systems, with having to install two drivers, sometimes in a certain order, and in a certain way.


Basically it's the Dell drivers if you just want it easy and to work, but there are plenty of other options out there if you want Nvidia/AMD drivers for whatever reason.

 

I see, thanks for the reply. Usually I'm 100% fine with just installing drivers from Nvidia or AMD's official website--mostly since I want the latest and greatest in driver performance.

Does the DELL driver's lag in update frequency since it's not directly from Nvidia or AMD or does it keep up with every driver?

And is installing an official Nvidia or AMD driver from their respective websitres on a Alienware the same exact procedure as any other notebook as say Sager, Lenovo, Asus, etc.?

 

For Nvidia based products, yes. You'll need to use a modified INF that includes the vendor ID information for our graphics cards. For AMD products, I'm not certain but it looks like they are supplying that information within their drivers without the need for modification. I've heard that people are having problems updating their AMD drivers, ending up with the previous driver version still being installed after running the installer and rebooting.

 

ahh..thanks for clarifying this. Are these complications Alienware only or does it also effect Lenovo, Sager, etc.?

 

Dell's official drivers lag considerably compared to Nvidia/AMD driver releases, which is part of the reason there's so many people who use drivers other than Dell's. This all started way back when Nvidia/ATi released desktop drivers every so often, and notebooks rarely if ever got updated drivers other than a few times during their product life for certain fixes.

For the most part the procedure is the same regardless of Notebook manufacturer, but it does vary depending on the generation of graphics chip, the GPU brand, and of course whether or not you have SLi/CF and/or switchable graphics.

It's probably best if you research a particular system (say a M17X R3) and the process used in updating it's graphic drivers for the available or certain GPUs, rather than the overall process on notebooks. That way you'll get specific info on the pros/cons and any known issues with certain drivers, chips, etc.

 

ahh..I see. Yea, I think now though with the Verde program and AMD stepping it up they are getting a lot more driver updates.

Let's say if I compare the set up in my sig (both m17xR3 and HM150 can fit this), would there be any driver update differances between the 2?

 

Verde is a nice idea, but it's still not what it should be. The ideal is that you can use mobile GPU drivers the same as you would use desktop card drivers, download it, install it, it works. That's still not true and even the best GPU drivers sometimes don't support all notebooks even if they are made for a particular chip. There is still a disclaimer that certain OEM notebooks, like Dell and Alienware, require OEM drivers for all notebook features to be enabled. When they get over this, we'll have something.

A M17X R3 and a P150HM with the 6990M would be similar as far as installing the AMD reference drivers part, but with the M17X, you might have special considerations with either stacking the drivers on top of the Dell drivers to make it work or stuff like that.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/579120-m18x-how-install-amd-reference-drivers.html

Here's a thread in the M18x forum about installing AMD reference drivers, you can get an idea of what's involved. Maybe some guys with the 6900M on their M17X will chime in here and give you more specific info on what they do for it to work.

 

o dang--I've always liked the way my desktop drivers install--clean and simple. Do I have to keep the DELL driver? what's it even do?