MRG
Newbie
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2007
- Messages
- 1,174
- Reaction score
- 0
I posted this here quite awhile back, but it has since faded into forum history, so I thought I would repost it in the hopes that it'll help some of you here that have been asking questions about how to check & update their computers drivers. For those of you here that already know all of this and think that "Everyone Already Knows This.", Well not everyone does so please keep all such comments to yourself. Not everyone is as tech Savvy as you might be.
MRG said:Greetings all,
I had a complete stranger PM me a few days ago and he asked me if I would be able to help him with a few problems he had with his PC. While I was of course only too happy to be able to help him, I asked him where he had gotten my contact info from. He told me he had got it from a site I hadn't posted on in like 6 months. Ended up he had bought a PC from a yard sale for his son and wanted some help getting it updated before he gave it to him. His request gave me an idea for my next guide.
As you all know, each different component or "Hardware" within your PC requires software or "Drivers" to run properly. While some of you would think this common sense, you must remember that at one time YOU were new to PC's and so therefore did not know this. I hope that the info I type below will help those of you that are either new to PC's or have some questions.
The first step is to know what the specs of your PC are. By this I mean what components or hardware can be found within your PC. There are 7 main components to every PC.
The 7 major components in a PC are:
1)The CPU or Processor. This is the Brain of your PC. It controls all the overall functions of your PC. The speed of your processor will be displayed as Gigahertz or GHz for short. (i.e. 2.40GHz) There are 2 main companies that make mainstream CPU's found in todays current PC's & they are Intel & AMD.
2)The Video card. This piece of hardware controls the Graphical elements that are displayed on your monitor. Not all video cards are alike. For those of you that like to play games on their PC's or use programs such as AutoCAD, having a powerful video card is just as important as is having a powerful CPU.
3)The RAM or "Random Access Memory" that is installed within your PC and the speed of it. Random Access Memory; the amount of memory available for use by programs on a computer. Also referred to as "main memory". For example: A computer with 512 MB of RAM installed has approximately 512 million bytes of memory available. Contrast to ROM (read-only memory) that is used to store programs that start your computer and do diagnostics. Each and every program or game that you run requires a certain amount of RAM. Some types of hardware also requires you to have a certain amount of RAM installed in order for it to run correctly. As a general rule of thumb the more RAM that you have installed, the better. That is to a point. For general everyday use, 1GB is advised & for gamers 2GB and up of High-Speed RAM is advised.
4)The Sound card. This piece of hardware is what translates the signal from both the CPU and audio source into a signal that can then be sent along to your speakers. Not all Sound cards are alike. Many motherboards offer what is called "Onboard" sound which is a generic sound card. While some makes and models of motherboards on the market offer good to even great onboard sound, as a whole, onboard sound offers very poor performance overall. The reasons for this are many, but the biggest is that onboard sound lacks what is called a DSP or "Digital Signal Processor". The digital signal processor is a fast processor for handling digital signals independent from the PC-processor or CPU. It buffers results that are delivered to the PC on demand. However, not all independant sound cards offer a DSP and in which case, your PC's processor must still do all the work. This will also result in overall lower performance from your PC's CPU that could be used instead to boost the performance of whatever program or game you were running. Higher end Sound cards such as the "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS" and "Sound Blaster X-Fi" series of cards have a builtin DSP on the sound card itself. Many other makes and models of sound cards offer DSP on their cards. It's just a matter of checking. To make it simple, I only used DSP an an example, as newer, high performance Sound Cards are extremely advanced in their own right, in addition to the other hardware that is installed in your PC.
5)The motherboard or often called "Mainboard" within your PC is what all hardware is connected to. It allows everything to work with each other. The CPU, Video card, RAM, Hard drive(s), CD/DVD drive(s), Sound card & Network or other device cards are all connected to your motherboard in one way or another. Be it a cable that plugs directly into the motherboard itself or via a connecter at the front or back, such as through a USB port.
6) The HDD or "Hard drive" plays a very important part, because without it, your PC would not work. All programs including the OS (Operating System. i.e. Windows XP or Vista) are installed on your HDD which is in laymans terms, nothing more than a mass storage device. There are several different speeds when it comes to HDD's. 5400 RPM hard drives are the slowest and offer the least amount of performance. Laptop HDD's are often 5400 RPM. The next speed up and the most common is the 7200 RPM HDD which offers much better performance over the 5400 RPM HDD. A step above the regular 7200 RPM drive are the SATA drives. They also run at 7200 RPM, but offer better performance over regular ATA drives. ATA drives are a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the drive itself. There are several versions of ATA, all developed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee: ATA: Also known as IDE, supports one or two hard drives, a 16-bit interface and PIO modes 0, 1 and 2. ATA/33:Also called Ultra ATA, Ultra DMA, UDMA and DMA-33, supports multiword DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps. ATA/66:Version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that doubles Ultra ATA's throughput to 66 MBps. ATA/100:Version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that supports 100 MBps. SATA or Serial ATA is an evolutionary replacement for the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is the group responsible for developing, managing and driving adoption of the Serial ATA specifications. Users of the Serial ATA interface benefit from greater speed, simpler upgradeable storage devices and easier configuration. SATA runs at ATA/150. As programs become more and more advance, so too must the hard drives that they are installed onto. Raptor drives for instance run at 10k & 15k RPM's, which vastly improves the drives overall performance. There are several different type of storage media, such as large capacity Flash Drives, such as can be found in your iPods & USB flash drives. I'll get into that at a later time.
7) The OS or "Operating System" is a program of foundation commands and procedures that allows a computing system to perform basic tasks such as managing files, accessing peripheral devices and running applications. All computers must have access to some operating system in order to work. Examples of an OS are: Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinME, WinNT, Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, MacOS & Linux. There are a few others available as well, which I have not listed here.
To check Your PC's Specs:
There are several different ways you can check. The easiest way is to just watch the first screen as your PC turns on or POST, as it's called. On most systems, the CPU speed and amount of RAM are displayed. In the event your system does not show that on startup, then you can easily check once your PC has loaded to Windows.
R.Click on "My Computer"----> Click on "Properties" The first screen that pops up will display the make and model of your CPU (Most commonly displayed will be either AMD or Intel), along with it's speed. The amount of RAM you have installed will also be displayed as will the version of Windows you have running. An excellent tool that you can download is alled "SANDRA" This incredable program will fully scan your systems specs and will give you a very detailed report of just what you have in your PC. From the make and model of the CPU to the speed that your RAM is running at. It'll even give you the bios version that is installed on your motherboard. I have tried almost every "Diagnostic" tool known to man, and none of them come close to what SANDRA can do.
Now that you know what you have in your PC, you'll need to be sure to have all the newest drivers installed. Below I have listed all the major hardware component sites.
SANDRA, the best PC diagnostic Tool
New Updated Version For Vista Available.
Support for platforms using the Intel? Xeon(tm) processor with 64-bit extensions family: Support for Intel? EM64T technology.
Support for platforms using the Intel PXA27x processor family: Support for Intel? Wireless MMX(tm) technology and Intel? XScale? technology.
Support for DDR2-SDRAM platform: Intel? 91X, 925X, E7520/E7525/E7530 chipsets, DDR2-SDRAM SPD/EEPROM.
Windows Mobile(tm) 2003 Second Edition platform: Windows CE .Net 4.21 supported.
File system aware benchmarks: Both File System Benchmark and Removable Storage/Flash Benchmarks are now file system aware: the test file(s) will be analysed and defragmented if required. (Windows 2000/XP/2003 only)
Enhanced support and compatibility: (AMD? Geode GX1, GX2, GX3 CPUs; AMD? Athlon 64 939pin CPUs; Intel? 6300 PIIX; VIA PM880/PT880 chipsets)
Blended optimisation for AMD64/EM64T: All benchmarks are now optimised for both AMD64 as well as the EM64T platform. Please see the EM64T and AMD64 press releases for more information.
Key Features (SP2b update)
Added defragmentation support for test files used by the benchmarks: All test files created are defragmented to ensure the performance measured is not impeded by fragmentation of the test files created.
Added Intel Pentium 4 and Xeon (Nocona) reference results for Windows x64 edition. Now you can compare and contrast the performance of Intel and AMD solutions in both legacy 32-bit x86 mode and 64-bit x64 (AMD64/EM64T) mode. You can also compare the results with Intel 64-bit IA64 systems.
Added support for PCI Express video cards.
Improved reliability of Windows Mobile 2003 and 2003 Second Edition remote information & benchmarking library.
Added support for Windows CE 4.20 x86 standard editions through additional remote information & benchmarking library.
Compatibility verified with Windows XP SP2 Release version and Windows 2003, XP 64-bit, XP x64 SP1 Build 1218.
Available Platforms
Win32 x86 ANSI (Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003)
Win32 x86 Unicode (Windows 2000/XP/2003)
Win64 AMD64/EM64T Unicode (Windows XP/2003 x64 Edition)2
Win64 IA64 Unicode (Windows XP/2003 64-bit Edition)
WinCE 3.00 ARM Unicode (Pocket PC 2000/2002 / Smart Phone 2002)1
WinCE 4.20 ARM Unicode (Pocket PC 2003 / Smart Phone 2003)1
WinCE 4.20 x86 Unicode (Standard)
WinCE 4.21 ARM Unicode (Pocket PC 2003 Second Edition / Smart Phone 2003 Second Edition)1
http://www.sisoftware.net/
The 2 Major Video Card Manufacturers
NVIDIA
(i.e. Geforce)
http://www.nvidia.com
ATI
(i.e. Radeon)
http://www.ati.com (International)
Miscellaneous Video Card Manufacturers
http://www.powervr.com - (Kyro I / II)
http://www.matrox.com
http://www.sis.com
http://www.powercolor.com.tw/
http://www.sapphiretech.com/
Mainboard Manufacturers
http://www.intel.com
http://www.sis.com
http://www.viaarena.com
http://www.nvidia.com
http://www.asus.com/
http://www.abit-usa.com/
Sound Card Manufacturers
http://www.creative.com -(Soundblaster)
http://www.terratec.com
http://www.yamaha.com/ - (Older sound cards)
http://www.realtek.com.tw/ - (AC '97 Codec Onboard Sound)
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/
http://us.hercules.com/products/index.php3?t=2
DirectX
Microsoft's DirectX is an application programming interface (API) for developing games and multimedia applications for Windows. It gives programmers access to the hardware while hiding specific hardware details. There are six components, including Direct3D for 3-D imaging, DirectDraw for 2-D, and (starting with DirectX 8) DirectVoice for communicating with other players during online game play. Every game requires you to have a certain version of DirectX installed. At the time of this guide, the current version is "DirectX 9.0c"
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...20-BFBB-4799-9908-D418CDEAC197&displaylang=en
Windows Update
Microsoft releases many types of updates that address a broad range of issues. To make it easier for you to get the most important updates?updates that help protect your computer and your information?Windows Update uses these categories:
High priority - Critical updates, security updates, service packs, and update rollups that should be installed as soon as they become available and before you install any other updates.
Software (optional) - Non-critical fixes for Windows programs, such as Windows Media? Player and Windows Journal Viewer 1.5.
Hardware (optional) - Non-critical fixes for drivers and other hardware devices, such as video cards, sound cards, scanners, printers, and cameras.
http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/v5consumer/default.aspx?ln=en-us
I hope that the above information will help those of you that are unsure about what you can do when it comes to your PC or otherwise have limited knowledge when it comes to how to keep your PC up and running the best it can. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small, please feel free to ask.
To quote myself:
"There is NEVER a stupid question. Only Knowledge."
-MRG
