Driver

From TSG Library of Knowledge

A driver is a set of instructions that allows hardware to function properly with the software environment. Every piece of hardware has some sort of driver associated with it, and some of the more crucial hardware components require keeping drivers up to date. Video cards, Sound cards, and external peripherals are some of the most common devices that should maintain updated drivers.

If you are unsure of whether your drivers are up to date or not, an easy method to tell is through the DXDiag report.

1 Video Card Drivers
2 Audio Drivers
3 Chipset Drivers
4 Monitor or Display Drivers
5 Others

Video Card Drivers

Video card drivers are among the most common items that need to be updated. Computer games rely heavily on video cards, and different driver versions can provide performance improvements and visual enhancements in different games. For new games, the latest driver versions should always be used.

Video cards can be downloaded from the video card manufacturer's website:

ATI cards (Radeon, Radeon Xpress, Fire): ATI Drivers
NVIDIA cards (GeForce, Quadro, nForce, Tesla): Nvidia Drivers
Intel video chipsets: Intel Drivers

Drivers for other video card chipsets can be found at the manufacturer's website.

Audio Drivers

These are the drivers needed for the audio hardware. They do not get regular updates as compared to Video card drivers and are needed once at the installation of Operating System.