which drivers should i install?

[cporro]

i'm of the opinion the fewer things installed the better. question below in bold...

i filled out the gigabyte support form asking about the troubles i had with the installation cd. they basically said i don't need to install any of those drivers because windows has all needed driver. i beg to differ. there seems to be no lan driver. you need that to update windows. also no usb3 driver. that's ok. i can install that if i ever need to. side note: those ports do not seem to work unless the usb3 driver is installed. EVEN if windows supplies all the drivers...wouldn't they be generic? maybe not the best or fastest?

what i have installed is windows with latest update and the realteck lan driver (from gigabyte site. hope it's not old). i have not installed the x58 chipset drivers.

system info:
i7-950
Gigabyte X58a-UD3R rev 2
CORSAIR XMS3 12GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMX6GX3M3C1600C7
SAPPHIRE 100292DDR3L Radeon HD 5450 1GB
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 (700 watts)

i have 4 sata hdd. i don't run any raids.

here are my questions:

1) do i need to get the latest chipset driver from intel or is that supplied in window's updates?
2) what sata driver should i use if any? i've heard intel matrix manager talked about a lot.

i ran sandra lite to test my ram bandwidth and processor and the scores looked too low to me. maybe i'm not reading it right.

thx for any help or links to resources.

[Dark Mantis]

Personally I agree with most of what you have said there. The less crap the better (crap is a technical term for unused programs) clogging up the system.

To answer your questions though:

1) I would advise to get the latest one from Intel but there probably wont be any difference. Even the ones on the Gigabyte site should be fairly up to date.

2) The Intel Matrix Manager is an old utility now and been superceded by the Intel Rapid Storage Technology

[JakeF150]

I found this site to have all the latest drivers.  You can find your board there also.
http://www.station-drivers.com/