Windows 7 RTM - Intel Chipset Drivers?

papagiannakos

Weaksauce
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Hey guys,

I searched around for a bit but have so far been unable to find a direct answer -- what Intel chipset drivers should I use for a clean install of Windows 7 RTM?

I've seen links to some older Intel Windows 7 Beta chipset drivers around, but when I go to Intel's site I can't find any Windows 7 files at all.

Thanks.
 
Use the ones it comes with, simple. If you require RAID capability the default ones should handle it just fine, but if necessary grab the latest Storage Matrix drivers for Vista, they'll work fine (but they may not install if the default ones in Windows 7 are newer).

Intel may post some updated drivers if necessary in the next few days or weeks now that Windows 7 is "out" for MSDN/TechNet folks, but in terms of them being available just because of this, that's a shot in the dark.

Most manufacturers will STILL not provide actual working drivers for Windows 7 until the general release date of Oct 22nd. They can't be doing support on an as-yet released OS for the minority of folks running it while they're still trying to get the damned drivers working in the first place.
 
I didn't install any drivers. I left it with what W7 installed by itself and everything's been great.
 
Hey guys,

I searched around for a bit but have so far been unable to find a direct answer -- what Intel chipset drivers should I use for a clean install of Windows 7 RTM?

I've seen links to some older Intel Windows 7 Beta chipset drivers around, but when I go to Intel's site I can't find any Windows 7 files at all.

Thanks.
Install the OS and be done. There are no reasons to install drivers unless 7 does not provide you one (except GPU which do need to be updated regularly if bugs you have are addressed). I did have to install the Storage Matrix drivers for my AHCI drive just because I wanted the "Remove Hardware" removed for my internal drive, which I will never hot swap. I did have to run the driver setup in Vista SP1 compatibility mode in order to get them to install.
 
Not to crap the thread but with regaurd to drivers my experience is that Vista drivers for the most part work in 7, but I have had some issues with more essoteric devices, the main one being proper multi-touch and pen drivers for my HP tx2z with an n-Trig based digitizer. n-Trig has actually release a couple of test drivers, one at the release of the Windows Beta in January and the RC release in May. However I've not had much luck with them so I've been running the default drivers. They work GREAT with just the pen but the touch interface is w little whacky,

Now some have has had decent experiecs with the same driver on the same laptop! Go figure. There were some other things that didn't work early on but it seems that Vista drivers worked better in the RC. The last thing for my other then my tablet drivers would be final Broadcomm blueooth drivers. They actually now have a driver label for use with Windows 7 RC now but the Vista drivers did work to some extent though they seemed a little less then solid. The RC 7 labled driver is better but still is a little off. They don't don't seem to produce a an option for bluetooth stereo in the Sound playback panel so and I end up having to turn my S9 headphones on and off and back on again. The the sound will adjust to stero from mono. Weird.

Anyway good luck!
 
There's a known issue with the default MS AHCI SATA driver. I'd recommend installing Intel drivers ASAP if you plan to use AHCI.

IIRC I used the Vista drivers... my 64 bit Win 7 has been rock solid.
 
Use the ones it comes with, simple. If you require RAID capability the default ones should handle it just fine, but if necessary grab the latest Storage Matrix drivers for Vista, they'll work fine (but they may not install if the default ones in Windows 7 are newer).

Intel may post some updated drivers if necessary in the next few days or weeks now that Windows 7 is "out" for MSDN/TechNet folks, but in terms of them being available just because of this, that's a shot in the dark.

Most manufacturers will STILL not provide actual working drivers for Windows 7 until the general release date of Oct 22nd. They can't be doing support on an as-yet released OS for the minority of folks running it while they're still trying to get the damned drivers working in the first place.

If I remember right, the default drivers provided by MS are still dated from 2006. Intel has much newer drivers than that.
 
Yep...use the Vista drivers from Intel. They are newer than the ones baked into Win7.
 
Get the latest intel drivers, and run them in an elevated command prompt as setup.exe -S -OVERALL
 
The issue here is that "newer" does not automagically imply better... there's a very good reason Microsoft continues to supply those older drivers *hint*rock-solid-stability-without-question*hint* so... keep that in mind.

The Golden Rule of Thumb for Driver Updating should be:

If it works fine, then leave it alone.

I personally wouldn't muck Windows 7, after a fresh clean installation, with drivers for Vista (yes I'm aware that they work) YET because Intel and Microsoft both apparently agree that those older drivers in Windows 7 are good enough for pretty much every installation of Windows 7.

If newer drivers become necessary - and I mean absolutely necessary - then Intel will create them, and distribute them, and Windows Update will have them.

Stability is the primary concern with the default Windows 7 drivers... and yes, it's been noted that they are damned fast enough so, keep that in mind when you're thinking about dropping a bunch of drivers on an OS that already works better than any other version of Windows out-of-the-box.
 
The issue here is that "newer" does not automagically imply better... there's a very good reason Microsoft continues to supply those older drivers *hint*rock-solid-stability-without-question*hint* so... keep that in mind.

The Golden Rule of Thumb for Driver Updating should be:

If it works fine, then leave it alone.

I personally wouldn't muck Windows 7, after a fresh clean installation, with drivers for Vista (yes I'm aware that they work) YET because Intel and Microsoft both apparently agree that those older drivers in Windows 7 are good enough for pretty much every installation of Windows 7.

If newer drivers become necessary - and I mean absolutely necessary - then Intel will create them, and distribute them, and Windows Update will have them.

Stability is the primary concern with the default Windows 7 drivers... and yes, it's been noted that they are damned fast enough so, keep that in mind when you're thinking about dropping a bunch of drivers on an OS that already works better than any other version of Windows out-of-the-box.

I think it's more about base level compatibility than rock solid stability. One driver to get things rolling that won't cause problems. How can a 2006 driver take advantage of hardware that didn't exist until two years later (e.g. P45, ICH10R)?

EDIT: just to clarify, Win7 does use Intel specific drivers for most ICH10 devices (USB, PCI express, LPC, etc). But then turns around and uses a generic MS AHCI driver for the hard drive controller.
 
How can a 2006 driver take advantage of hardware that didn't exist until two years later (e.g. P45, ICH10R)?
Your right, those old drivers are just going to work with native IDE mode, etc. Advanced features will require new drivers but some hardware simply gets better but something called a 'standard' makes the driver compatible with a certain hardware. Most hardware manufacturers are going to stick to a design that works which means the same basic functionality is simply improved with faster hardware but similar drivers/software.
 
Your right, those old drivers are just going to work with native IDE mode, etc. Advanced features will require new drivers but some hardware simply gets better but something called a 'standard' makes the driver compatible with a certain hardware. Most hardware manufacturers are going to stick to a design that works which means the same basic functionality is simply improved with faster hardware but similar drivers/software.

Notice that I did say the drivers were good for base level compatibility. But I did mean to say "take full advantage of..."
 
Notice that I did say the drivers were good for base level compatibility. But I did mean to say "take full advantage of..."
If it makes you feel any better, I've game benchmarked my system with default Vista drivers and then fully upgraded all drivers, including chipset, storage and sound, then benchmarked again, and had FPS loss. I repeated the test several times and it always came back slower with the newer drivers. Also my HD Tune results were very inconsistent with newer controller drivers in IDE mode, compared to the stock OEM driver provided by Vista. AHCI mode downloaded drivers doesn't seem to be inconsistant though.

In the past several years, I've never once experienced a reason to have to install new drivers. Sure it might make people 'feel better' that they have the 'latest and greatest', but that doesn't mean your going to get the best results. I always bring this up in the GPU forums. Installing new drivers isn't going to do shit for you if the drivers haven't addressed your hardware since the one your replacing, but it can cause problems if something gets broke.

I stand by what I said before, unless you have stability problems, there is no reason to upgrade over the drivers provided by Vista/7, except for GPU's since game compatibility is always changing.
 
I stand by what I said before, unless you have stability problems, there is no reason to upgrade over the drivers provided by Vista/7, except for GPU's since game compatibility is always changing.

QFT, and I couldn't have said it better myself... ;)
 
I stand by what I said before, unless you have stability problems, there is no reason to upgrade over the drivers provided by Vista/7, except for GPU's since game compatibility is always changing.

You're obviously right about GPU drivers but there's a lot of things out there now, like web cams, keyboard, mice, bluetooth devices etc. and you generally want to keep those up to date as well. No default drivers for my Brodcom USB bluetooth transciver. On coll thing though the driver wizard did was give me a link STRIAGHT to the download. That was kind of cool. Would be nicer if the driver installed from the get go but not a bad back up.

Reminds me, got to re-install my SideWinder mouse and keyboard drivers!
 
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