Which laptop manufacturers allow you to update your own drivers?

I've had a Toshiba laptop for the past 3 years which I've been happy with overall until I discovered Toshiba will not allow me to update drivers without going through their support site. The latest video card drivers they have posted are from 2009 which is not ideal.

Long story short for my next laptop I'd like the ability to update the video card drivers (specifically) myself without going through a manufacturer's support site. Which laptops/manufacturers allow you to update/tweak drivers and settings?

P.S. Sorry for the cross post. I just discovered this forum.

 

What's your GPU? The thing with Toshiba is that you can "usually" use GPU drivers from other laptop models on their site. For example, Toshiba has up to date drivers [nvidia 290.xx] that could be installed on other Toshibas with nvidia GPUs. Check out their "All Models" page:
Model Content Page


I'm not sure if any laptop manufacturers [Officially] allow the ability to install drivers directly from nvidia/AMD [maybe CLEVO does?]. However, this doesn't mean it's impossible. Many people do install drivers directly from nvidia/AMD and have had great success.

 

hi and welcome to nbr
not heard of that before. drivers are there to be updated.
if youve got a dedicated graphics card from nvidia or ati i cant see why toshiba wouldnt let you update them.

so any laptop with dedicated graphics can be updated by the end user.
i will always recommend clevo laptops but of course it also depends on budget as you could spend up £6000/$10,000 on a top spec.

what part of the world are you living so we can direct you in the right direction.

 

There's a difference between "don't want you to" and "won't allow". It's your product, you can install what you want on it, they can't stop you.

 

my toshiba lets me update drivers, I don't see why yours wouldn't.

 

My laptop has a dedicated 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650. The latest drivers for that vid card on Toshiba's site are from 9/2009. When I tried to update the drivers to the latest version from the ATI site I get a message that says something to the effect of "You are not allowed to update your video card drivers. Please contact the manufacturer's site for the latest drivers.".

Upon contacting Toshiba's customer support I was told "There's nothing you can do to update the drivers until new drivers are posted to the support site."

 

I'm not sure if it's Toshiba that's preventing me from updating the drivers or ATI. It's the ATI driver update application that's telling me to go to the manufacturer's site for the latest drivers.

 

im no expert with ati so someone will have to clarify this.
like nvidia can Xombies do the old fasioned safe mode update?
there are 2 ways of updating drivers. the auto update which it says you cant do and the manual update in safe mode.
wait for clarification but:
save newest driver to desktop.
download driver sweeper
delete old drivers in control panel add remove program.
reboot pressing F8 continuously to go into safe mode.
run driver sweeper in safe mode and remove all ati bits and pieces it finds.
reboot normally.
then load newest drivers that you saved on desktop.
reboot and you should be done. hopefully

as i said wait for someone else to confirm this would be ok to use as ive only ever used it with nvidia drivers.

 

Some notebook manufactures declined on being supported by the official AMD Catalyst suite, but i dont know if Toshiba is on that list or not.

AMD Releases Catalyst 12.1 Preview - Download & Discussion - Guru3D.com Forums
This is the driver im currently using, might install on your notebook too.

 

Thanks for the link DEagleson! I was able to install that driver on my machine. Unfortunately it didn't improve performance in SW:TOR as much as I was hoping. LOL

Much appreciated in any case!

 

No problem at all.
AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview is a fresh driver but wont take too long for BioWare to tweak their game to run a little smoother post launch.

 

You can install almost any driver by changing the hardware IDs in the .inf

 

You can update your own drivers on any laptop, however, whether or not that messes with your warranty is another question. It really shouldn't though, you own it. Now, overclocking it...that's a different story entirely...

 

Unable to access the Dell driver page, I scanned for an driver update on the Nvidia page and they said I need a OEM driver and referred me back to Dell.

 

That's because it's not "officially" supported. Still doesn't mean you can't do it.

 

Installing drivers is a software-level change that can easily be reversed, and won't mess with your warranty in any way. It doesn't cause hardware failures.

If you're worried, simply run the recovery discs or install a fresh copy of Windows before you send your laptop back for repairs. Then again, I screwed up the BIOS of my old laptop trying to undervolt the GPU and they still fixed it for me no questions asked. "My laptop won't turn on" is all I told them.