Thinkpads Forum

Have brand new T60p with ATI V5200 FireGL GPU, and 4G RAM,
Hooking this up to 24" NEC LCD external display via docking station.

Works fine for most applications, but doing just medium level complexity CAD work - system turns unbearably slow and eventually crashes CAD application. Screen then starts having refresh problems such as underlying windows showing through and when moving a window display will "smear" image across as it is moved. Thus it behaves like some video buffer is getting full.

The ATI is set specifically for the CAD application with and the recommended video drivers for mobile unit installed. Scaling down resolution a few notches seems to improve things and switching to 17" LCD external monitor cures issues.

Can't find any combo of settings / drivers/ resolution that will work with 24" display. Could it be that mobile version of ATI simply can't handle video output required?

You could try turning Power Play off (if you have the ATI Catalyst control panel installed.)

Some v5200/v5250s have overheating problems (especially with games, and (for me) Adobe InDesign) Search this forum for more info..

If you don't mind my asking, what cad application is crashing?

seeplus wrote:You could try turning Power Play off (if you have the ATI Catalyst control panel installed.)

Yes, have the control panel; will look for this option if it is on.

Some v5200/v5250s have overheating problems (especially with games, and (for me) Adobe InDesign) Search this forum for more info..

it starts out ok and gets worse, which I took to be a buffer filling up or not releasing memory. but could be overheating.

If you don't mind my asking, what cad application is crashing?

solidworks and not even big files at that. As I mentioned works fine with 17 inch external LCD. This indicates to me that the mobile version of the ATI FireGL is a "lite" version of the real card, as I did not have any problems with same display and a supposedly less powerful (less RAM, slower processor, older less memory GPU from Dvidia) tower PC

Not the best solution, but you could try turning down Hardware Acceleration. Right-click on the Desktop, choose Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot, and move slider to the left. At least this is how it is done with my ATI Radeon 9000.