what does updating drivers do? (newb)

Purchased m11xR1 from dell about 2 mos ago

Have been reading on forums and everyone says one of the first things to do is to update all the drivers

does the really help performance? I've been reading and it seems a lot of people have headaches rather than true performance increases

Also, with the dell nvidia update 263.08, does this put "optimus" tech into my current GPU?

Should I update everything? (realtek audio drivers, network lan card drivers, intel graphics drivers, etc)

 

Generally speaking, the dell video drivers are total . I would go to the nvidia site and download the latest drivers for your laptop. YES, you will see performance increases, very big ones in some cases.

and yes, updating your sound/network/integratedgraphics is always a good idea.

 

Hmm, i read if i dl the nvidia drivers from the nvidia, i won't be able to fn+f6 to change graphics mode.

also, posters also mention that the new nvidia drivers aren't made for m11x or no longer supports? (ie, latest driver for 335m is 275.33, states "1.Notebooks supporting Hybrid Power technology with Intel chipsets are not supported by this release")

 

no, R1 does not support optimus, it does update with 'hybrid graphics' drivers instead of optimus.

 

Sorry for this, but i'm confused

do i install all the recommended drivers from the dell support site? (realtek audio, alienware fusion, nvidia chip)

I notice the alienware fusion, I am already running the current version, what happens if i accidently dl and install the same driver?

 

not neccessarily if you have current drivers and BIOS. Just save your downloaded drivers in safe place since it would become handy to have them already if you decide to clean install windows (the factory DVD does not contain any drivers, just the windows 7 so you'd need to reinstall them manually or integrating them to windows installer)

no problem.. I did that when I first receive my machine (no benefit of overwriting your drivers if you don't have problems with them)

Enjoy your new m11x, hope everything is OK with your m11x

 

you sure? my m11x came with a driver disc!

 

Darn sure I am.. learnt it the hard way when I tried to clean install win7 for the first time (didn't look for NBR clean install threads then)...
I wish I got driver disc. Would save me the trouble downloading and manually install them. Anyway, I just got this win7 installation disc (the black one, which upon closer inspection clearly states it does not include drivers)


How on earth does your m11x r2 come with driver disc? Retailer?

 

it's called a "Resource DVD" and it, like i said, came with my R2.

 

oh well, some just aren't as lucky as others I guess