How To Update Any Driver On Your Gaming PC
It's easy to forget to update all the drivers of your gaming PCs. But if you don't have your drivers properly updated, then how will you ensure that your gaming rig is running as optimal as it was built to be?
Follow along to see how you can manually update your PC's drivers yourself. Or if you are in a hurry, you could always use a driver booster. That way you can get back to playing your favorite games, instead of spending too much time updating each driver one by one.
Updating Video Card Drivers
Your video card's drivers are the most important driver updates you need to do to ensure that your PC is in optimal shape, especially when it comes to playing higher demanding titles (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077).
Without the proper driver updates to your video card, you increase the chance of running into random texture glitches, having animations not looking the way they should, or even not being able to run your games at all. Video card manufacturing companies help create specific drivers, especially when new games come out, to help ensure that the card can run the game as well as it was designed to run it.
All your PC's driver updates should be treated like how you would treat your operating system's updates. You (hopefully) update your OS as often as possible. You should also stay on top of all your driver updates. It can be a bit of a time-consuming process to manually update each driver but you must keep them updated! Using a bona fide driver booster can help streamline that process if you aren't privy to updating them one by one. With that said, here are some ways to manually update your video drivers if you have the extra time to do so.
AMD Video Drivers
If you use an AMD video card like a Radeon RX 5700 or a Radeon RX 6800 XT, you will need to get their official drivers either through their AMD Radeon Software or from the official AMD driver download page. You can also find a list of driver updates for other devices on that page.
AMD's driver software can update your drivers whenever you check for another update, but with this software and Nvidia's software, you will have to keep checking manually to see if there is another update. If you are downloading the driver from the AMD driver download page, then it will be easiest to click through the product list in "Graphics" to find your correct series of video card.
Nvidia Video Drivers
Getting the latest Nvidia drivers is a similar process if you're using a GeForce GPU, like a GeForce RTX 2070 or GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. You'll need to get the drivers either through the GeForce Experience software or from their official Nvidia driver download page.
Be sure to match your PC's specifications from the drop-down menus if you decide to get each driver from their page. Start with the "Product Type" drop-down menu as most of the other fields will automatically fill in. Then, you can click on the series and specific video card installed into your PC.
Updating Device Drivers
Updates on your device drivers are the most time-consuming part of the process because each peripheral is different even though Windows is usually great at finding the correct driver. There's a chance you will still need to find the driver manually.
You will need to open the Start menu on your desktop, and then type "Device Manager". The control panel menu option for the Device Manager should pop up. After you open Device Manager, you will see multiple options for different devices and controllers.
For specific devices, follow along below to find the correct driver(s) for your devices.
Mice
If you don't keep your mouse drivers updated, then there is a chance you may not fully utilize each feature your mouse may or may not provide. You could also run into some poor mouse behavior such as the mouse sensor randomly dragging your pointer around or having multiple double clicks.
To manually check your mouse drivers, do the following:
- Open up Device Manager.
- Navigate to "Mice and other pointing devices".
- Right-click the name of your mouse and then click on "Update driver".
Windows will search for the driver for your mouse. If it is not able to find it, then you will need to search around from your mouse manufacturer's website to find the correct driver.
Keyboards
To ensure that your keyboard can keep a connection with your PC and to ensure you can use the macro keys (if it has them), keyboard drivers are needed for a keyboard to use all its features. Without the right keyboard drivers, you will likely not be able to use the full set of features that your keyboard comes with, such as macros or lighting effects.
To manually check your keyboard drivers, do the following:
- Open up Device Manager.
- Navigate to "Keyboards".
- Right-click the name of your keyboard device, and then click on "Update driver".
Again, if Windows cannot find the correct driver from their automated search, you will need to check with the keyboard manufacturer's website to see if they have the latest driver update available for download.
Other System Devices
For any other peripheral, you will simply need to navigate to the specific type of device drop-down and repeat the same process as you would with trying to automatically find updates for your mouse and keyboard. For example, if you are trying to find the right audio drivers for your PC speakers then you will need to navigate to "Audio inputs and outputs" within the Device Manager and find your specific device.
For any of the other driver updates (i.e. updates to your chipset, network adapters, or other system devices), you can use the software compatible with your motherboard. Most motherboard manufacturers have software that you can download, and they will have some important driver updates right out of the software. They usually provide driver updates for the Ethernet port on your board, as well as all the additional updates for several features of your board.
Here is a list of some of the most popular motherboard brands official download pages:
Those official support pages have drop-down menus and search functions to help you find your specific motherboard. You will need to refer to your PC's product page or manual that came with it if you got a prebuilt through a retailer. If you built your PC from scratch, then you can refer to the product page of your motherboard through the retailer you bought it from to get the exact model number.
You must be certain of the exact model number of your motherboard. If you install the incorrect motherboard drivers to your board, then you could run into several issues.
Have you tried to have Windows automatically find your updates, and even used your motherboard's software to find the correct drivers, but still having trouble finding and updating the right drivers? Then you will want to look into using a driver booster! Driver boosters make life easy to find and install the correct drivers to your gaming rig.
Do Things the Easy Way - Use a Driver Booster
A good driver booster can fix all your driver issues with one click of your mouse. The IObit Driver Booster is the #1 driver updating tool you should use to speed up the process of getting every single driver updated.
This booster is connected to a database with more than 4,500,000 updated drivers. The software quickly finds the latest driver updates from this database and installs them for you!
- It will scan your PC for broken or incorrect drivers, and ensure they have the latest update. Sometimes it's hard to tell when you truly have the newest updates to your driver.
- It will create backups of your drivers and system to make it quick and easy to roll back if you run into any driver-related issues.
- The database is secure and confirms the driver is NOT from an unreliable source. That way, you never have to worry about downloading a malicious piece of software that is promising that it's the real deal.
- You will be able to have smoother gaming performance through their Game Boost feature which helps shut down background processes and unnecessary Windows Services to ensure your PC performs the way it was built to perform.
- You will not only have all your drivers properly updated with one click - but you can also stay confident knowing that you are getting all the latest updates and keeping your PC running clean.
There is more to making sure that your PC will run your games than just checking and matching up with any game's system requirements. You also need to have all of the latest updates to all of the other system devices running on your PC.
Hopefully, this post helped find the correct drivers for your PC! You could search around and spend a bunch of time hunting for the correct drivers on this quest...Or...you could use the turn-key solution of using a driver booster.
IObit's driver booster is the best tool to have in your arsenal to ensure your PC is brought up to date - and stays that way. Learn More»