Should You Update Your Drivers?

In general, we don’t recommend updating hardware drivers unless you have a reason to. The driver for the SD card reader that came built into your computer is probably just fine. Even if the manufacturer does offer a slightly newer version, you probably won’t notice the difference. There’s no reason to obsess about having the latest hardware drivers for every component in your computer.

But there are good reasons to update your drivers. In particular, gamers will want to keep their graphics drivers as up-to-date as possible to ensure the best graphics performance and least bugs with modern games. In other cases, you might need to get the latest version of a hardware driver if the current one is causing problems with your computer.

If you do want to update your drivers, skip the driver-updating utilities. We can’t repeat that enough. Go right to the source for your hardware drivers. This means the hardware manufacturer’s individual websites and MIcrosoft’s Windows Update.