If we use our computer to play games, we surely have a fairly powerful graphics card. Otherwise, if we do not play or use very powerful programs, the GPU is expendable, as long as the CPU of our computer has a graphics chip. The installation and update of drivers has changed a lot in recent times. Right now, Windows is able to find, download and install almost any driver automatically via Windows Update. However, if you want your PC to work at full performance and in the best possible way, you should not trust this tool or other programs to update drivers.
And less in those of the graph
Windows Update installs the drivers … but not the latest
The latest versions of Windows are capable of detecting the new components that we connect to the computer, searching and downloading the drivers automatically. This is very convenient when we install Windows from scratch, or when we do not have enough knowledge to do it ourselves. But is it really worth it?
In the case of NVIDIA drivers, Windows Update allows us to download a stable version of them. But this is not the latest version available. Sometimes it even goes several versions behind. In addition, it downloads us a generic version of the drivers, so we will not have the Game Ready or Studio optimizations.
And not only that, but it also installs the drivers bareback for us. In the best of cases we can lower the NVIDIA Control Panel, but nothing else. So we are left without the PhysX libraries, without the audio drivers for HDMI and without other add-ons. Also, we can forget about GeForce Experience, the tool that helps us optimize games and programs for our PC.
In summary, what we get if we download the NVIDIA drivers from Windows Update is:
- An outdated version, not prepared or optimized for new games.
- Not having the Control Panel or GeForce Experience.
- No Game Ready or Studio drivers.
- Lack of additional drivers or libraries like PhysX.
- Unable to perform a clean installation of the drivers.
And we can solve all this by installing the drivers by hand.
Download drivers
We must lose the fear of installing and updating graphics card drivers, whether they are NVIDIA or AMD. On the GPU website we can find a simple wizard that will allow us to download the latest version of the drivers with just a couple of clicks. Also, if you don’t know your PC, you can use these programs to find out the graph you have and choose the specific model on the web.
Once the driver is downloaded, we simply run the wizard by double clicking on it, and follow the steps. In the process we will install (in the case of NVIDIA) also the GeForce Experience to optimize the games and, in addition, receive notifications when a new version comes out, thus forgetting about Windows Update.
