What drivers do I really need?

[Guest]

I have an ASUS P9X79 Pro mobo. There is a whole bunch of unorganized and pretty confusing drivers sets at that mobo's drivers page:

http/www.asus.com/Motherboards/P9X79_PRO/#support_Download_36

1. What drivers do I really need? Wouldn't chipset, internet and audio drivers be enough?

2. I see there is a whole set of SATA drivers... I only have one SSD and 3TB HDD, will I be required to have any of those drivers for them?

3. What is the difference between Intel LAN and Intel Gigabit Ethernet drivers? Do I need any of them and which one?

I am just kinda fed up by installing the same drivers at every Windows re-installation that don't really make sense to me over and over again...

Thanks, guys.

 

[Herr_Koos]

I normally follow these steps:

1) Let Windows detect and install any and all devices automatically. This is by far the easiest and works in probably 99% of cases.
2) If one or more on-board devices do not work, install the drivers from the CD that came with the mobo.
3) If a device(s) still does not work, or the supplied driver is out of date, only then will I download it from the website.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

You need Chipset, LAN, Audio ( if you use onboard audio ), Bluetooth ( if you want to use onboard Bluetooth ), SATA drivers ( both ) and the RST driver. You want the latest WHQL drivers for your OS for each. It should take like 5 minute to install all of these. Maybe faster with an SSD.

Edit : Unlike Herr Koos I download the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website and install them. They may be newer than what Windows update will find and especially from what comes on the disk. I am kind of anal about it though. His way will work fine although maybe not with the chipset drivers.

 

[Herr_Koos]

I'm normally pretty anal about this as well, but I prefer to at least get things working with a basic driver before updating the drivers.