Nvidia vs OEM

Let's take a look at some Nvidia Graphics options for my Precision 7730. I see that Dell offers three options

Dell Hosted Driver

The latest Nvidia Driver I can download from Dell is version 25.21.14.1917

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=JDGFN&oscode=WT64A&productcode=precision-17-7730-laptopwww.dell.com

Nvidia Hosted Driver

I can also search Nvidia directly for one of the Nvidia Video Cards that originally came in my Dell Precision 7730

Official NVIDIA DriversNVIDIA

The link above allows select the Quadro P5200 to find the matching Driver to Download

Once downloaded and extracted, I want to see if these Manufacturer Drivers will work with my Dell Precision 7730 by searching for my SUBSYS 08321028. I can use this command in PowerShell to do the work

$DeviceIds = @()
$Path = 'D:\OSDDrivers\Download\NvidiaDisplay\431.70-quadro-desktop-notebook-win10-64bit-international-whql'

$Infs = Get-ChildItem -Path "$Path" -Recurse -Include *.inf -File |`
Where-Object {$_.Name -notlike "*autorun.inf*"}
foreach ($Inf in $Infs) {
    Write-Host "$($Inf.FullName)" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
    $DeviceIds += Get-WindowsDriver -Online -Driver "$($Inf.FullName)"
}
$DeviceIds | Where-Object {$_.ClassName -eq 'Display' -and $_.HardwareId -match '08321028'} |`
Sort HardwareId -Unique |`
Select HardwareId, HardwareDescription, Version

Which gives me three results, which happen to be the exact 3 Nvidia Video Cards that are available for my computer

OEM Support

Another way to test this is to look for a file called ListDevices.txt that Nvidia puts in the root of all of their Drivers

A search in this file for NVIDIA Quadro P5200 results in 16 hits

And when looking at the SUBSYS I can see these supported OEMs

• 103C - HP

• 1028 - Dell

• 10CF - Fujitsu

• 17AA - Lenovo

• 1462 - MSI

• 1146 - Force Computers

Dell, HP, and Lenovo ... these are the big 3 right?

Nvidia and Dell OEM Driver

So what is the difference between the Driver downloaded from Nvidia and the one offered by Dell? The answer is very simple, size. The Dell Driver has much fewer INF files which means that this driver will NOT work with the other OEMs. The other difference? The Dell OEM Driver is older

Conclusion

I've already demonstrated that if a Driver has the SUBSYS for your computer, then it is specific for your computer. Additionally, this should also demonstrate that if you want to use Nvidia Drivers from Nvidia instead of Dell to save some space in your Driver Packs, you should.