Maximum PC

So I came across a rather interesting problem. My computer's rather finicky with hardware for some reason and so when I made this upgrade (an 8800GT to a GeForce GTX 460 SE), I was concerned the computer wouldn't take it. It did... at least for a while. I noticed that it would freeze seemingly randomly, but it's actually consistent when I run a benchmark tool like 3DMark or Lightsmark. I thought it was my sound card since I have this crazy belief that it makes the computer funky if I touch it... but nope.

It turns out when I rolled back to the drivers that came with the video card, every thing worked. It wouldn't freeze at the points it would in 3DMark and well, I haven't tested other games that freeze yet, but I'm sort of confident this worked. The problem is though these drivers are probably considered Beta, as Windows warned me these are unsigned or unverified drivers.

The question is now, who's drivers do I use? The manufacturer's or the official ones from NVIDIA?

I myself would use whichever signed manufacturer's drivers didn't cause a problem. If that means a rollback, it means a rollback. As long as everything is stable. My two cents.

I agree, use the manufacture's drivers.

I opt for the actual drivers from the chip maker myself (Nvidia or ATI) unless it causes a problem, I generaly don't bother with the drivers, unless they are the same version or pretty close to it. So far, no problems. Yeah, I may be loosing out on some of the extras that the manfacturer's drivers may have, but I've found that some manufacturers don't update their drivers as often as they should or don't always have the most up-to-date stable drivers.

So for me, it's chip manufacturer's and then the card maker's drivers if the chip maker's drivers don't work. Plus, I don't like some of the crapware that some manufacturers make you install when you install your drivers (some of the game trials, or extra utilities that I'll never use).

Just my two cents. It's software, so I doubt that one way or another, you not going to damage your card, unless it screws with your fan speeds and the card overheats, but I've never seen that happen yet.