PC Drivers & Software

[KevinDofNovi]

This question is about when to utilize the AMD downloads for chipsets and when to look for a similar download from the motherboard manufacturer.

Chipset drivers are important.  My initial install was Ryzen 5 1600 on Gigabyte motherboard at a time when the BIOS only had four revisions and there was just one chipset driver. Now four years later Gigabyte's website lists three chipset driver downloads while AMD's website lists just one for the CPU.

I am puzzled by the chipset driver implementation. Is the chipset more of a motherboard component or a CPU-related component? which chipset driver should be installed when you have two available to choose.  I would have thought the motherboard manufacturer because they need to support their product.  AMD knows this but they release their own chipset driver for a reason.   Please clarify.

[Stanmore]

AMD Chipset drivers are generic in that they are not customised for an individual OEM MB etc.

If your OEM chipset drivers are more recent use them. Even if they predate the AMD drivers you might still be wise to use them.

In my case, with three prebuilt Dell machines, the OEM drivers are ancient as Dell does terribly in pushing updates for Chipset drivers and indeed BIOS so I have decided to use the AMD Chipset drivers. However, they are not necessarily optimised for those systems. Dell are still on Win 10 driver sets for my systems and I am running Win 11 22H2 so I can't wait for Dell to do something useful

Edit - I do have a 5500 machine and prefer the MB Chipset drivers for that one. Had a few issues with the AMD generic Chipset drivers. 

[ardankyaosen · Accepted solution]

Besides actual BIOS updates, using anything from the motherboard manufacturer's site is a last resort for me.  Theoretically, they might fine tune things to better suit their hardware.  But, my experience has been universally bad with that.  Usually, they just stick unwanted stuff in there.  I have no experience with laptops or highly proprietary pre-built machines, though (I build all my machines).  In those cases, it might be better to go with the manufacturer's drivers.  Also, sometimes there's no other source but the motherboard manufacturer (for instance, those BIOS updates for the board that I mentioned at the start and the Thunderbolt drivers for my Gigabyte motherboard are only available from Gigabyte).

But, otherwise, I'd always get motherboard/chipset drivers from AMD.

So, in my very specific case, the first thing I do is update my BIOS from Gigabyte:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-VISION-D-P-rev-1x/support#support-dl-bios 

Then, I get the latest chipset drivers from AMD (again, specific to my board):

https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-am4/b550 

The AMD CPU drivers aren't really drivers.  It's just their Ryzen Master package (which is optional, but cool).  Theoretically, those are available through the CPU driver downloads.  But, I've found that the download is usually better updated at their Ryzen Master page:

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master 

And, I've always used either AMD's or NVIDIA's graphics drivers directly from them instead of from whichever OEM might have manufactured the card.  Currently, for me, that's:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-6000-series/amd-radeon-6800-series/amd-radeon-rx-... 

All of those AMD downloads (except for the direct Ryzen Master one) are findable at:

https://www.amd.com/en/support 

[KevinDofNovi]

Your post is what I did (before you posted)  so it is good confirmation on my approach.   With my situation,  Gigabytes BIOS updates also had a prerequisite to be at a certain chipset version or greater so that their sequential BIOS updates would work.   So where you did BIOS then chipset,  I had do implement chipset then BIOS - I had 4 BIOS updates to apply since my 2019/March build.   

I was also confused by the versioning of the chipset.  Gigabytes latest from 4.8.2022 is v3.10.22.706  and AMD's from 2.28.2023 is v5.02.19.2221.   And to makes matters worse,  Gigabyte had the following words uder the BIOS notes "Update AMD Chipset Driver 18.50.16.01 or later version before updating to this BIOS." - well where the heck is 18.50.16.01 coming from if their own website stopped at v3.10.22.706.

thank you for your explanation.

[cpurpe91]

Is this a prebuilt system by someone like Dell or HP? If not I would use chipset drivers from AMD. Typically chipset drivers from the motherboard product page are there just to give you some functionality and aren't catered specifically to your motherboard. 

If for some reason there is incompatibility between chipset drivers and your specific setup I would then go back to the drivers on the motherboard support page, but I would only do this if I was certain the chipset drivers were at fault. 

[KevinDofNovi]

My PC is self built which eliminates one variable from the calculus.  I would feel compelled to reconcile HP downloads with motherboard downloads with AMD downloads.   I would agree with above posts that after the initial install (or product purchase)  the manufacturers have very little incentive to keep current with updates.   They would risk breaking something then supporting it.   thank you for your input.

[ardankyaosen]

It's interesting that Gigabyte would specify a chipset version requirement for their BIOS updates.  AFAIK, chipset drivers are OS specific.  So, motherboard-level BIOS updates should never even be aware of those until the OS is booted.  I'd assume that once the OS was booted up, if older chipset drivers saw stuff in a new BIOS they didn't understand, they'd just ignore it.  Then, when those chipset drivers got updated in the OS, everything would be fine again.  Maybe they're assuming updating from within the OS instead of from the BIOS, itself.

[Killjoy_666]

Biggest problem for me is that none of the chipset drivers are working.

Technically they are but I get BSOD from time to time...sometimes few times per hour.

Same goes for gpu drivers.

Shocking thing is...I let Microsoft install drivers through Windows Update and everything seems to be working fine...for now.

It's been few days since I've seen BSOD.

This tells me that AMD is not able to build decent drivers.

How the hell MS has better drivers than AMD itself?

If this continues, I'm going straight to Intel and nVidia.

My setup is not new but it's functional.

Ryzen 5 2600

Gigabyte ab350m ds3h v2