Advice concerning the installation of drivers

Hey everyone. So, got a question for you. Not too long ago, I bought an alienware m18 R2 laptop. It cost a pretty penny, but I wanted to powerful laptop. However, I have been running into this very annoying and, frankly, upsetting issue where the laptops audio will just randomly "stutter." It does this usually when I am watching youtube videos, but it happens pretty much every single time I try to do something involving video recording, like when I use microsoft clipchamp to record or edit a video, or when join a video meeting in microsoft teams (it happens a lot with teams). This is really frustrating to me, as it is not as if the laptop is at all starved for resources, and I paid way to much for this powerhouse to be running into these issues. I have found that LatencyMon has been a useful tool in at least helping me diagnose the problem, but not how to resolve it:


This got me to thinking that maybe this has to do with my driver installation strategy, and wanted to get the communities opinion. See, when I install a fresh operating system, the first thing I do is install the drivers from the manufacturers website. The only exception to this rule is any nvidea graphics drivers. I install that driver by first installing the nvidea app and then downloading and installing the latest driver through the nvidea app. After all of the drivers from the manufacturer are installed, I run windows updates, let it install whatever drivers it wants, and then, from that point going forward, I use both a utility called Snappy driver and the Intel® Driver & Support Assistant to update and install any drivers that the tools indicate need to be installed/updated. Is this a good strategy, or should I only be using the drivers downloaded from the manufacturer's website? Also, if anyone knows of a fix for the audio stuttering, you would be my hero forever. Funny enough, I did run into the same issue a long time ago, but, at that time, the audio stuttering was caused by the fact that I used a version of the Microsoft DISM tool to modify the install wim of the operating system that was newer than the version of the dism tool I was using. That is not the case this time. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Toggle Hardware acceleration.

Any driver install app (ie Snappy) stay far, far away from. They will get you into trouble.
Intel driver support assist is fine, especially for graphics. The Intel drivers hit their own app much faster than they hit the OEM.
If you are going to use the Dell app to keep your drivers and bios updated, disable include drivers with Windows Update as it has been known to install older drivers and I certainly would not want to let WU control my bios updates. Turn that sucker off. You do not need both and the Dell app is preferable.

Some flagship machines, such as an Alienware, have special drivers that perform special functions and bios created just for that machine. That's another reason to use the Dell app to update your drivers. You can stop that app from auto starting with Windows if you wish by opening task manager, go to startup apps. disable that app from auto-starting and scanning your machine every time it starts up. That's what I did. I just manually run Dell Command Update from my all apps list every month or so. That way I am in control of what drivers and bios are installed and when.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what Audio latency is, some of the common symptoms, and how to troubleshoot any issues you may encounter.

Thanks for the input. I will take a look at the video you provided, @FreeBooter , and let you all know how it goes.

You are very welcome!

The update strategy is simple, Windows updates and the Laptop manufacturers update App. That includes both Video drivers.
Most manufacturers updates come via Windows updates on mine, a different brand Of Laptop.

Very simple, minimal effort and a great result.

I have had those types of Laptop for 13 years, so has stood the test of time.

The Nvidia Experience App, Intel Driver and support assistant are never installed. Nor is any other dubious driver update App.

Running Latency monitor for 20 mins like you have done will always give you that "Red text conclusion", Whether in Hybrid mode, or iGPU, or dGPU mode. I fail to see that as useful.

I get an approx similar result and my audio is great.

"if anyone knows of a fix for the audio stuttering"
Get your Recovery Media from Dell and start again.

Your going to get a lot of back and forth opinions on the NVIDIA and Intel graphics drivers lol. I'll share my recent experience with those drivers on a new Alienware 18 Area 51 I got at the beginning of the month. I decided to upgrade both the Intel and NVIDIA drivers to the latest versions from the Intel driver and support assistant and NVIDIA app. Upon doing so my modern standby S0 sleep mode was promptly broken and the screen refused to wake up from sleep and would BSOD. After consulting with Dell support who suspected the graphics drivers (my guess is the latest NVIDIA driver) I reinstalled the Dell factory drivers and the sleep issue was resolved. So for the time being I'm sticking with the factory graphics drivers. The Dell NVIDIA ver on my RTX 5080 is 572.90 currently.