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Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

T60/T61 Series
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highfly117
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Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#1 Post by highfly117 » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:19 am

Hi all,

I'm trying to get some newer drivers installed on my t60p currently i'm on windows 7 with an ATI firegl 5200. Automatically the 8.561.0.0 drivers get installed. I've downloaded the 10.2 legacy drivers and used mobility modder.net after going through the install catalyst control centre now just stops responding if i try and open it. and the driver version is still 8.561. I've also tried with the 13.9 and 13.12 drivers does anyone know of a way to get anything later than 8.561 to install.

geka3250
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Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#2 Post by geka3250 » Sat Nov 18, 2017 2:05 pm

highfly117,
You can try ATI Catalyst 12.11 Modded from here. Look for ATI Catalyst 12.11 B11 HotFix 11.09 V6 BETA.
Works good with v5200, but no support for PowerPlay, so I downgraded to WinUpdate's 8.561
340CSE | 380XD | 770 | 770X | 770Z | 390E | 600E | 600X | T23 | X30 | T30 | T41p | T43 | T60p | X200t

highfly117
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Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#3 Post by highfly117 » Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:17 pm

geka3250 wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 2:05 pm
highfly117,
You can try ATI Catalyst 12.11 Modded from here. Look for ATI Catalyst 12.11 B11 HotFix 11.09 V6 BETA.
Works good with v5200, but no support for PowerPlay, so I downgraded to WinUpdate's 8.561
I've tried this driver and it installs but it makes the laptop hard lock up a few seconds after log on. i'm i doing something wrong.

geka3250
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Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#4 Post by geka3250 » Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:20 pm

It worked for me, but I haven't installed CCC. Just a display driver
340CSE | 380XD | 770 | 770X | 770Z | 390E | 600E | 600X | T23 | X30 | T30 | T41p | T43 | T60p | X200t

dr_st
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Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#5 Post by dr_st » Sun Nov 19, 2017 3:09 am

highfly117 wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:19 am
does anyone know of a way to get anything later than 8.561 to install.
What for?
Thinkpad 25 (20K7), T490 (20N3), Yoga 14 (20FY), T430s (IPS FHD + Classic Keyboard), X220 4291-4BG
X61 7673-V2V, T60 2007-QPG, T42 2373-F7G, X32 (IPS Screen), A31p w/ Ultrabay Numpad

highfly117
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2017 10:43 am
Location: London, UK

Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#6 Post by highfly117 » Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:11 pm

geka3250 wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:20 pm
It worked for me, but I haven't installed CCC. Just a display driver
Thanks i re-installed windows 7 and those drivers now work.
dr_st wrote:
Sun Nov 19, 2017 3:09 am
highfly117 wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:19 am
does anyone know of a way to get anything later than 8.561 to install.
What for?
better performance and support? why else?

dr_st
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Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#7 Post by dr_st » Wed Nov 22, 2017 3:06 am

highfly117 wrote:
Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:11 pm
better performance and support? why else?
You will get neither better performance nor better support for this ancient GPU. You cannot magically turn 11-year old hardware into anything modern by installing newer software. In fact you may run into issues, like you already did. Plus PowerPlay is no longer working per geka3250's reply (so battery life suffers). How is that for better support? Was the time you invested into it worth it?

People often tend to believe that a newer driver is always better. This far from being generally true. This is true when a new driver fixes a particular problem or at adds a particular feature targeted at the device you are actually using it for.

Because GPU drivers are typically the drivers with the most frequent releases and changes, and because the GPU is one of the key components, the approach of "getting the newest driver" is in most cases flawed. There are several reasons for that:

First, GPU drivers typically support several generations of devices, but at some point old devices are removed from testing, and way before that they are removed from considerations for any kind of improvements. I can assure you that no one at ATI/AMD has been thinking about any kind of improvements / bugfixes for the ATI X1400 for several years now. You may accidentally get a performance improvement, but you are just as likely get a performance hit because some changes made in the driver to favor the newer architectures (you know, the ones still being sold and supported, and the ones the company still cares about) over the old ones.

Furthermore, even before they are completely removed from testing, the testing on old devices at some point becomes limited to - does it break the computer or not? If some particular feature stopped working (e.g., PowerPlay), no one will care, and no one will even notice. Especially when you are modding drivers to get them to work on a device that they were not even originally targeted for, which is what you are doing here. If you run into any bugs, the manufacturer will not offer you any support, and will be completely justified in doing so.

The above point, incidentally, is valid not only for older hardware, but also for older operating systems, because GPU driver stack is intimately intertwined with the OS. So to validate compatibility you must test a particular driver with a particular GPU on a particular OS. Change any of the components in the combination, and you are basically in uncharted territory where nothing is guaranteed.

Finally, because the GPU is a key component, problems with GPU drivers can cause the system to malfunction in fundamental ways, to the point of making it unusable. You just had to reinstall the whole OS because the driver was causing hard lockups. Now it works for you, until when? Who knows?

I can understand it, if you already experience a critical issue, which forces you to dive into this whole modding/experimenting crap to get a working system. I've suffered a great deal of pain in the past to get GPU drivers to sort-of work on OS they were not designed for (like Radeon M6 drivers on Win7, or Intel GMA drivers on Win10), just so I can get sleep functions, and smooth scrolling, and resolution adjustment to work. That was worth it, because I would not have a fully functional system otherwise.

However, in your case, it seems like you do have a fully functional system, and you are wasting your time chasing "the driver with the higher number", just so you can say you have that higher number (because of your faith that some magical improvements are attached to it). In the process you are likely losing functionality, and degrading system stability. That is why I call it a flawed approach.

Yes, I realize I just "wasted" about 15 minutes of my time thinking about this write-up and typing it up. But if even one person reading this will save themselves the hassle of potential hours of wasted time messing with GPU drivers when it is not required, I'll call it 'mission accomplished'.

Good luck to you and may your system remain stable for years. :)
Thinkpad 25 (20K7), T490 (20N3), Yoga 14 (20FY), T430s (IPS FHD + Classic Keyboard), X220 4291-4BG
X61 7673-V2V, T60 2007-QPG, T42 2373-F7G, X32 (IPS Screen), A31p w/ Ultrabay Numpad

highfly117
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Location: London, UK

Re: Thinkpad T60p ATI Drivers

#8 Post by highfly117 » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:54 am

While everything you said is generally true. I was having issue getting some older games to launch at all which installing the 12.11 drivers seams to have fixed. On the other hand it seams that Linux has better performance and support for the ATI v5200 than windows does (I'm guess while AMD dropped support the Linux community is a bit different).

personally I've love my X60 tablet more anyway so I may look at selling this t6op.

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