Although hardly specific to N64 emulation, the subject of drivers is often important, particularly where 3d graphics are concerned, so this page is really intended to be a reminder for you to make regular checks for updated drivers - if you make a habit of doing this, you will simply not encounter many of the problems others do! I'll provide links to the official download sites to make sure you always get the latest version.

Your video card drivers can have big impact on the performace, stability and graphic quality of an emulator. Whilst you must already have drivers installed, it is usually best to download and install the latest ones, even if they are marked "beta" - don't let that scare you! =)

Rather than trying to keep up to date with all the different graphics cards on the market, I'll provide links direct to the driver download pages of the most popular cards:

You're card not here? Try www.3dchipset.com

This is a site that has unreleased drivers for most graphics cards (i.e. extremely new beta drivers that have been leaked, so you shouldn't have them at al, so be carefull, they may be buggy)

Here are drivers for the most popular gamepads - other pads may also have software so please check the manufacturers' homepages, I can't attempt to cover the whole market!

Although DirectX was installed with your version of Windows, there is usually a newer version available for download from Microsoft:

DirectX download page

You can check your version of DirectX by typing "dxdiag" into the windows "Run" box and pressing enter. If your version is less than the most recent, it is essential that you update, to avoid literally hundreds of possible compatibility problems.

After installing it, you must restart your PC. If you wish, you may then run DirectX Diagnostics. To do this, press the Start button, then choose "Run", and in the box type "dxdiag" without the quotes and press Enter.You can use this utility to run several tests, to make sure everything is working properly.