Do you still install chipset drivers?

I have a habit of installing chipset drivers from either the chipset manufacturer or motherboard manufacturers website. But they all seem to not work very well. It turned out that my motherboard blew up, so I got a new one. After I installed all my drivers Win10 gave me a BSOD and it was only when it automagically deleted all the drivers I installed that it was able to boot. So, I just installed my Nvidia drivers and everything seem A-OK.

I was just thinking that maybe this is no longer necessary because Windows 10 already has good chipset drivers builtin.

Or maybe it's just because AMD drivers suck ass?

As I still use Windows 7 and will till it's dead and can't be used at all yes I install chipset drivers and update them when related but nowadays it's pretty rare to see them updated since this old Sandy Bridge based laptop is pretty well established now. Also install the latest available SATA drivers to get every last little bit of potential performance from the storage controller as well (Intel drivers dated in 2013).

It's not absolutely necessary, no, but recommended if there are newer drivers available. Intel stuff is typically pretty simple but AMD (and Nvidia chipsets which are pretty rare anymore) seem to require a lot more - with Intel you have one chipset driver package which handles it all but with AMD and Nvidia hardware there's like 6 different individual ones that all show up in Add/Remove Programs individually which is somewhat irritating to me but that's how it goes.

I have a Windows 10 test box and ran it without installing the Intel chipset drivers for a while.
(MSI Z97 board with 4690K, 1TB and 2TB spinners)

Installed the Intel chipset drivers later and saw no big differences. Windows 10 identified and
installed the iGPU Intel drivers from the start before the chipset driver install.

The only thing that I noticed that really changed is the SATA drivers changing from Microsoft
to the Intel drivers. The drives were already running in 6Gps mode, so I saw no performance changes.

However, in general I think it's a good idea to install the OEM chipset drivers rather than rely on the
default Microsoft drivers.

.

I come from the school of thought that says if it ain't broke don't fix it. I use this mentality with all drivers including bioses UI unless there is a stability problem or performance issues. If things are running good I don't update for the sake of updating as I don't need the potential headache. Video card drivers are about the only thing I updated routinely. It seems ms has the drivers set pretty good across all ranges of hardware in my experience with windows 10 on three machines I have it installed on.

Ofcourse, in my experience its always best to use proper chipset drivers instead of the generic ms ones.

Proper drivers can give you better stability, compatability, throughput etc etc, its always best to use them unless you know they are totally shagged.

Even with 10 I still install the Intel Chipset INF's. I suppose it's kind of pointless other than to see different names in Device Manager. But yah, if you are using an older OS you need to install chipset drivers, or INF's so the OS knows what drivers to use.

Before anyone else mentions Intel's chipset drivers.. they aren't "drivers". They just fulfill the missing devices in Device Manager.

But yeah I install the latest thanks to my OCD.

i always do at install time but i am bad at keeping them up to date over the time of usage.

When doing a fresh install of Windows 8.1 or 10 on my household computers (yes, I have a Windows Media Center machine, hence the 8.1), I install the video and chipset drivers. Now all 3 systems are pure AMD CPU (Phenom II 840, Phenom II X6 1090T and FX-8320), AMD GPU (R7 240, R9 290, and R9 290x) on Asus AM3+ motherboards (the one with the 1090T doesn't even do UEFI, it's classic BIOS). I install all drivers in "Custom" mode, and when installing the chipset drivers, it never sees ANYTHING in Windows 10, and Windows 8.1 only installs the USB filter driver.

yup that's what happens for me too.