Gigabyte B650M DS3H - what to install?

Lurking · March 15, 2023

I ordered this board and only want to install what I really need (clean W11 and so).

Correct me if my assumptions are wrong:

- I will use Audio through the HDMi/DP so I don't need that Audio driver

- I don't RAID, so don't need the SATA RAID driver

- I will need the latest chipset driver. But what is the AMD APU Driver? Do I need that? I don't have a dGPU, so will use the HDMI/DP on the MB. Do i need the APU driver? I assume if I make it that far, the monitors will work.

- There is a Realtek LAN PREISNTALL driver and a Realtek LAN Driver. Is the latter one just an older version? What does "Preinstall" mean? Do I need that, or do the W11 driver suffice?

- I will put on the latest BIOS

- I think the Gigabyte Control Center is some sort of Windows version to adjust the UEFI. So unless that is a resource hog, this might be worthwhile. On the other hand, I'm also fine just doing that in UEFI and then set and forget (in Windows, you never know)

- One-Click IS the EC FW Update... is that some sort of Windows version of BIOS update? Description says it is about higher RAM voltage and LED effects. I don't use RGB or so. So is this useless to me? Google tells me in the past (4 years ago) that tool also would brick the BIOS.

- Realtek Gaming LAN bandwidth control utility sounds like some limiter of bandwidth. I don't think this is needed for me (no LAN parties etc. )

Sorry for the noob question. But it sounds like half of those things aren't needed. and I really don't want to install bloatware (even if I can de-install later). i read the manual, but it didn't say which ones are bloatware

goatedpenguin · March 15, 2023

here is the site for amd drivers: https://www.amd.com/en/support

and you cant use the motherboard hdmi/dp if you don't have igpu you can only use it if you have an igpu and do not install gigabyte control center that is snake oil

Crunchy Dragon · March 15, 2023

1. Audio drivers will be good to have, even if you're not using the audio jacks. Up to you, though.

2. Correct.

3. You should have the latest chipset driver. If you have an AMD APU, get the APU driver. If you're not using an APU, then you will need a dGPU as there are no Ryzen chips that aren't APUs with integrated graphics, and your motherboard HDMI ports will be useless.

4. The basic Windows 11 driver will be fine, but you may want to update it in the future. In this case, get the Realtek LAN driver.

5. Cool.

6. Don't get Gigabyte's software. Just don't.

7. I wouldn't worry about this one.

8. Bandwidth control is probably just to optimize your bandwidth for playing games. I wouldn't worry about it either.

Lurking · March 15, 2023

14 minutes ago, swabro said:

here is the site for amd drivers: https://www.amd.com/en/support

and you cant use the motherboard hdmi/dp if you don't have igpu you can only use it if you have an igpu and do not install gigabyte control center that is snake oil

So I should install the chipset driver one from AMD directly, not the one from Gigabyte? Does Gigabyte just provide the very same file (maybe an older version)? Or does Gigabyte actually add something to the chipset driver? Since all Ryzen 7000 have iGPU, I don't really understand why they specifically call it APU (Like they did for 5000 series "G" chips, but there most CPU didn't have iGPU, unlike AM5). Yes, I will use the iGPU (on a 7900) and NO dGPU. Is the APU driver basically the equivalent to an Nvidia or intel display driver?

So I'll need both the APU and chipset driver from AMD site, nothing from Gigabyte.

11 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

1. Audio drivers will be good to have, even if you're not using the audio jacks. Up to you, though.

2. Correct.

3. You should have the latest chipset driver. If you have an AMD APU, get the APU driver. If you're not using an APU, then you will need a dGPU as there are no Ryzen chips that aren't APUs with integrated graphics, and your motherboard HDMI ports will be useless.

4. The basic Windows 11 driver will be fine, but you may want to update it in the future. In this case, get the Realtek LAN driver.

5. Cool.

6. Don't get Gigabyte's software. Just don't.

7. I wouldn't worry about this one.

8. Bandwidth control is probably just to optimize your bandwidth for playing games. I wouldn't worry about it either.

Thanks. So I won't get the Gigabyte utility, that is good to know. Only the Realtek LAN driver and chipset/APU driver directly from AMD.

I actually just recently learned that Audio drivers aren't needed for HDMI/DP. So I actually de-installed them on my older PCs to get rid of one potential bloat thing.

goatedpenguin · March 15, 2023

@Lurking if I were u I would just install all the drivers such as chipset, audio, networking etc. cuz there is no harm in doing so most them only take a few 100 megabytes of ur storage and they wont hurt your performance. Anything besides that is a personal prefrence but I strongly discourgae downloading gigbyte or msi center that is just the defintion of a crappy software, The One-Click IS the EC FW Update software is made by gigabyte and I would advice you not to download that because any software by gigabye is crap and there have been multiple posts about that updater giving errors to a lot of users.