Whats the point of installing chipset drivers?

[wisedude]

I have had my computer i built for a couple months. I have NFORCE4 AMD chipset and i realized i never installed the forceware thing. What does it do? Im fine without it so im wonderin if it will help. What can i do with forceware? OC? wat?

[alexio]

It makes your computer much faster in 3D, I'm not sure about calculations in general. If you don't install the chipset drivers you lose a lot of fps. If you run 3dmark03 for example and you have not installed the chipset drivers it's likely that you only get 1/3 of the points you would get using the chipset drivers.

[Major_A]

It tells the hardware on the motherboard how to communicate with Windows. Example, you can install a video card without drivers and it will work. But I will not work effectively until you install the drivers from that manufacturer's site.

[craig588]

Yeah, it's "just" a few thousand '01 points, you will never notice a functionality difference, just a performance boost.

[wisedude]

hmm this could be the casue for slowdown in battlefield 2 and such? I know for sure although i have nforce 4 i didnt install forceware. Are there any other drivers for NForce 4 that are likely to come on a mobo CD i may have installed
?

[wisedude]

also i think theres a chance i may have installed some, how do i check if they're installed?

[craig588]

Don't bother, it takes about the same amount of time to download them as it would to check if they are installed.

[wisedude]

but are they like graphis drivers where you need to uninstall the old ones first? also does it matter that i have the forceware "graphics" drivers installed?

[craig588]

With graphics drivers you don't need to uninstall them unless you're changing cards to a different brand. (I have actually even done that without reprocussions, but I know it's a problem for some people)

Your chipset doesn't care what other drivers you have installed.

[wisedude]

so i have no need to uninstall old chipset drivers if i have any? (although i dont hink i do)

also, why do they name the graphics drivers AND chipset forceware. its confusing

[Major_A]

Don't worry about unistalling chipset drivers first. If it needs it the installer package should take care of it for you. They don't name them the same thing, Forceware = video cards, nForce = chipset.

[nn_step]

Chipset drivers help your operating system run more efficiently..
But a perfect operating system will never need them...

[wisedude]

do the nforce drivers have any special functions? I read you can use them to OC your cpu.

[Major_A]

I think they come with nTune, that is a software level overclocking tool.

[J-Mag]

With graphics drivers you don't need to uninstall them unless you're changing cards to a different brand. (I have actually even done that without reprocussions, but I know it's a problem for some people)
Your chipset doesn't care what other drivers you have installed.

It is recommended by nvidia that you uninstall your graphic drivers before installing new ones.

I didn't care like you at one point because it didn't seem to cause any problems. However I have stubled upon performance decreases and odd graphical errors occasionally without uninstalling my drivers first.

[wisedude]

how do you access ntune? and does it OC the cpu?

[Major_A]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_2.05.09.html

[wisedude]

hmm so then it doesnt come with the chipset drievrs?