What the heck is a "driver"? And other n00b questions

Yeah, seriously. I do not know. Laugh and giggle at me all you want!

And on a much more important note, are drivers used across laptops? Let's say, for the sake of argument, I purchased an old Clevo product that is no longer on the Clevo website, and is no longer found on reseller websites. But that laptop has a 6990M, and i7 2760QM. Would you just update to the latest drivers based on this hardware? Or are drivers tailor-made specifically for specific models of laptops?


Thanks a whole lot! And sorry for wasting front-page space with this

 

Basically a driver is a small piece of software that controls each device on and including your motherboard.

Wiki is you friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_driver

 

graphics drivers are the only one i update now on my 3+ year old clevo. as long as your graphics card shows up on the driver tech spec when its released then you can update it.
actually tell a lie, various software you have loaded will tell you theres a newer version out so you can update that as well and it will over write the previous version.

 

I actually don't update my video drivers with the newest releases, because they aren't really optimized for older video cards. There are other forums that have comparisons of benchmarks and overclocking for different drivers with different video cards.

However, if I had the latest technology such as 6990M, I'd stick with the latest catalyst driver ATI offers.

 

Thanks everyone.

So drivers aren't made for particular laptops?

So theoretically, if the hardware never changes but new models of laptops are constantly made, they could all use the same drivers?

I'm really just curious if a laptop loses support simply because it isn't being made anymore. Or if they could potentially stay forever up-to-date if the graphics card and CPU are always modern (which I know can't be assumed).

 

Drivers are made for hardware devices. A single driver file can support a wide range of similar hardware devices, both newer and older. I could download and use the latest Nvidia Driver for my GTX 260M, but I know that it would not have the best benchmarking/temperature result in comparison to an older driver. There would be no benefit for me to stay "up to date" with the driver. My graphics card doesn't support DirectX11 and never will, regardless of the drivers I install. When most of the games will switch to DX11 or have much higher requirements, I would be left in the dust or would have to upgrade.

 

Drivers are tied to the hardware, not the laptop* (*usually). For example, any laptop with a 580m should be able to install Nvidia's standard drivers. All they do is interface the hardware with the operating system software. The caveat is that some manufacturers use proprietary drivers that don't allow you to use the ones available from the hardware manufacturer, which means you're stuck using the ones from the laptop company.

Hardware drivers can only be optimized to a point. There is a physical limitation to what the hardware is capable of. For example, there is no way for a driver update to make an old 8800GT perform the same as a newer 580 - it's lacking physical resources to do so. Drivers tend to have diminishing returns in performance as well. When hardware is first released, initial drivers are OK, but not great. The next couple of releases may boost performance significantly, but over time as the code becomes optimal the gains shrink.

As far as overall support is concerned, drivers are generally discontinued as new hardware replaces the old. If a company releases product X to replace product W, they will put more resources into supporting X and will eventually consider W to be legacy and EoL (End of Life/End of Support). So yes, theoretically if the hardware never changed, drivers would always be updated and current though the above mentioned diminishing returns are still there. At some point, drivers just don't need any updates because they run stable and have all the support you'll ever need in them.

 

Thanks! You guys are awesome

I am very happy to have gotten such awesome answers and I hope anyone who was also confused found this thread.

Anyway, these questions did have a point. I was planning on purchasing the X7200 from Malibal and I noticed that it was no longer available on the Clevo website. Nowhere to be found. So I was hoping driver support would always be there even though the laptop might not be.

I was going to purchase i7-960 and 6990M in CrossFire. And these are modern hardware so it looks it'll be seeing support for a while.

Also, I'm guessing Clevo is not a manufacturer that uses proprietary drivers, right?

 

Love it +REP

 

Yeah, you can use custom drivers with Clevo models. By the way, I hope you understand the price you pay for an absolutely awesome performance of X7200 model (weight/non-existent battery life/dual adapters).

 

Even though the x7200 will be phased out sometime in '12, Sager/Clevo rarely removes driver support. So while the PRODUCT page has removed the x7200, you'll still have support. If you go to either's Tech Support links, you'll still find drivers listed for the x7200. However, their drivers tend to be come stale as they stop posting driver updates for components of their older models to focus on the NEWER ones. To repeat, the links and support are still there, but they just stop updating them.

To combat that problem, I've compiled an x7200 driver/BIOS page (see sig). It has the latest from all vendors for components I and others have configured for this laptop as well as links to Clevo and Sager's Tech Support pages. However, you will note the drivers from Sager and Clevo are already somewhat stale. You can still download the drivers from Sager/Clevo), or you can also use drivers from the vendors who've release updates later than those hosted by Sager/Clevo.

The thread should have it all, but note, I think Clevo changed something on their FTP site as some of those links (for example to BIOS's) no longer seem to be working. If any vendor can let me know of a new FTP/HTTP resource, I'd be obliged.


NOTE... we haven't even covered the topic of BIOS flashes or Firmware updates. But that is for another time.

 

Haha. Me? Oh, you shouldn't have!

Thank you very much, yes!

I will very likely never be some place where I won't have an outlet. Also, I realize it is super heavy but oh well! A good work-out

I am not familiar with this dual-adapter business you speak of, though.

 

Hmmm... Since you'll be using CrossFire (XFire), do you know anything about Overclocking (OC) GPUs/CPUs? If not, you can ignore this issue - it is in regards to pulling too much power from a single power adapter (power supply unit - PSU) when pushing power consumption beyond the limits of what a single PSU can handle.

To other posters, the problem was reported when OC'ing a CPU along with NVIDIA 485s/580s. There's never been a problem until OC'ing is introduced, and I don't think I've seen a thread about the problem when people are using XFire, but I don't know if ppl were buying dual PSUs by this time.

 

Haha. Bios and firmware? This never ends!

What a great service/thread! I will make sure to +1 rep you to death.

So these drivers that you have posted will very likely be updated at some point officially by vendors, and this updates will work perfectly well for the X7200?

Another important question: does Malibal ship new notebooks with the latest drivers by vendors (which is what I want, obviously) or those 'stale' drivers by Clevo?

 

You probably haven't had to download one, but if you go to the x7200 Drivers/BIOS page, you'll notice the actual link points to AMD, Intel, JMicron, NVIDIA, Realtek, etc. These are NOT my drivers, but "official" drivers from the actual vendors.

Every week or so, I click through the links, checking to see if there is an update from the vendor. If so, I update the main post with that info. If you notice there's a date/version posted with each one. In Windows' Device Manager, you can look at the property of any driver to check the version vs. what is listed on the page. If one is out of date, simply download it from the vendor and run the install.

Dunno. Since Malibal is a builder, they may ship you a disk w/ the latest drivers, but since drivers are updated frequently, most likely they will send you the same driver disk they recv'd from Clevo with your system. I cannot say w/ out a doubt they will do this, but it is what my builder, AVA-Direct, did. In that case, once your new system is up and running, you can update any driver by simply checking and downloading any driver you feel is out of date. Really no big deal.

 

Gotchya. Thanks a whole lot
I gave out too much rep recently (big surprise, huh?). But I certainly will once it replenishes.

And this BIOS/firmware stuff shouldn't be much of a problem, right?

 

No. Just check it out when you get it. Usually a BIOS for any laptop with later hardware (like the XFire) will be relatively new.