Updating ALL the M11x R3 drivers directly from the hardware manufacturers, does it make sense?

I am wondering if it makes sense to update ALL the drivers on the M11X directly from the actual hardware manufacturers, i.e. does it add speed/stability/etc.?

I've installed PC Wizard 2010 by CPUID and I can see the actual hardware signatures/exact model numbers of each individual hardware part on the m11x r3. Thus it would be easy (but slow and time consuming) to find each individual driver from the actual hardware manufacturer and install it. From what I can see, only the motherboard is alienware design/hardware, the rest are all stock components.

So far, I've only updated the nvidia 540m (2GB) driver, and it does give some perf advantages, but nothing huge. If the other drivers are the same, I'd rather not go to 20 different web sites to get the specific drivers (I will just use the ones on the recovery DVD). I used to custom-build my desktops, piece by piece, and the original drivers, obviously, were paramount, but I am not using desktops anymore.

Anyone tried any other direct-hardware manufacturer-drivers (except the nvidia one), and what are your experiences?

cheers,

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M11X R3 Quad-i7 SB 8GB RAM 750GB HDD NVIDIA 540M 2GB VRAM WiMax Bluetooth Gigabit

 

I do this for devices that have drivers updated regularly as Dells are always so out of date.

On my m11x I DL the following direct from man:
nvidia gfx
intel gfx
intel rapid storage drivers
wifi drivers
audio drivers if I have issues with Dells (I have in the past with the xps range of laptops)

The rest I get from Dell as its easy and wont offer me any real benefit going direct.

the intel drivers I find important as Dells are so out of date I have had nothing but issues with my wifi and ssd which were both fixed with a newer driver

 

Over the years I have used the policy of 'if it aint broke, don't fix it'. This has served me fairly well and saved me quite a few headaches as others update things and have problems that I avoided. I suggest only updating if you have some issue you are trying to fix.

 

thanks! I am going to update the stuff ninja is talking about, I guess I could squeeze a bit more power, will let you know how it goes... any further experiences welcome!

 

Hi ninja, could you provide us links to the newest Dell Wifi card 1520's driver?

 

Dell's 1520 drivers work great for me, its the intel wifi drivers that don't.

Are you getting problems with Dells?

 

To help people out there, so far I've found the following updated independent drivers for M11x R3:

- Nvidia 540M - from nvidia site
- Intel HD 3000 - from intel site
- Intel rapidstorage - intel site
- Intel 6250-N WiFi/WiMax - intel site (bonus, you get Laplink PCSync for free)
- Dell Bluetooth 375 - dell site, but NOT the M11x one, as that hasn't been updated for R3, but the M14x download
- Realtek ALC665 - from ftp.us.dell.com/audio (again the M11x support page is useless)

cheers,

 

I am not sure if there are chipset drivers (sandybridge + cougarpoint northbridge), as I usually install those as well on desktops, but it is questionable how much benefit it would bring. Any experiences?

 

I have never noticed any benefit on intel chipsets.

Did you mean 375 bluetooth driver?

 

yep, the 375, i guess I typoed it above, as 365 was in R1 and R2 and is the only one available on the M11x page. The 375 is the one in the R3, the same as the one in the M14x, so that is the correct download page.

I did look for chipset drivers, even looked for separete north/south bridge chipsets independently, but nothing out there, so far.. i guess the windows-builtin should be fine

 

just for future reference: the driver page at dell for m11xr3 is best reached by selecting the make and model from the generic menus, as it seems to lead to a different page than when putting in the service tag. this other page for drivers has all the newest drivers for m11xr3 and has been updated as recently as november. I found it after a clean install of windows 7 resulted in about a dozen unknown devices in the device manager.

 

I get manufacturer drivers for the nvidia gpu, the intel gpu and chipset, the realtek audio while everything else is from Dell as you can't get an updated version of the free fall sensor driver from anywhere else.

 

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For some reason everytime I try to reinstall the freefall sensor driver, after every restart I come up with "Handle Error", any thoughts. Its possible that dell is offering the wrong driver on their website now. I noticed I cannot download the necessary wireless drivers nor the appropriate realtek audio driver, had to do some googling to find those. Can't figure out this freefall sensor nonsense though.