Investigation of drivers for sound, graphics and network interface cards with game platforms

Hey Guys!

I want to be talking about device drivers with you for this post and just explain what they are so you all get a better understanding of it all.
Starting with the basics, device drivers are a specific type of software which has been created so that the operating system can interact with hardware devices, so this could be your keyboard, mouse or printer.
So these drives are specific to the area of hardware that they are connected to, the hardware can be supplied with the hardware or may be downloaded when its in need by the operating system. If a newer model of the hardware is installed then the operating system will look to see if the driver is up to date and if this isn't the case then drivers can be updated and downloaded.


Sound-card Drivers, now to be able to use a sound-card your operating system needs to be able to have access and use a sound-card driver. This is a programme that links the OS and the sound card together, it tells the system what the sound-card is and what capabilities it has, like the amount of inputs and outputs its has.
There are many ranges of sound cards and obviously the more you pay for them the better quality they will be, for instance the ASUS Xonar Essence STX  (shown in the picture) runs off its own software which makes its easier to update, plus with an audio performance rating of 9.5/10 it is one of the better sound cards available on the market.

Moving away from Sound cards and onto Graphics cards now and in a similar way to sound cards,  the operating system has to have a graphics card driver to be able to use the card itself. This is the programme which allows the OS to connect with the Graphics card. This programme will tell the OS the details of the card, so this would be the name of it plus the types of frame rates it would be able to handle and the resolution of it. 





Network Interface controller drivers (bit of a mouth full), these are another component which are controlled by a driver. This is the part which allows you  to be connected to network via an Ethernet cable and the driver will tell the card how to access the network and also operate it properly. So in brief terms its a circuit board or a card that can be installed into a PC so you are able to connect to the internet.

This is the end of this part but I hope this has all made sense to you all :3
Until next time 

Fairwinds internet travellers!

Kristine