FireGL V5200 vista drivers problem

[fix5]

Hi, I'm new on the forum and already have a question for you all. Well quite an odd situation I have here. For about a year I have mine t60p and I'm very pleased with it. Problem started when I upgraded on Vista x32. I just can't get my usual ati firegl drivers on vista. I downloaded a new driver from lenovo site but because it is unified radeon/firegl drivers I get installed radeon driver. More specific; there is no workstation tab/option in ati catalyst center and it looks like ordinary radeon driver although it reports ati firegl 5200 card. It is kind of important for me because my primary tools are Autocad and Max. One other thing, maybe important, on lenovo site identify my laptop as t60 with ati firegl 5200:

Product: ThinkPad T60 2007-FBG [change]
Operating system: All [change]
Original description: T2500(2GHz), 1GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15in 1600x1200 LCD, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, Secure chip, UltraNav, Fingerprint reader, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

Strange ha? On win xp was all correct.

Help me please, and thanx.

P.S. Ok I know, gettin back to win xp would solve the problem but I would like to give a shot with vista

[Marin85]

Hi,
O.k I´m not sure if this is much of help, but AFAIK there are "special" model types of T series that are actually rated as T60 but do have the FireGL 5200. I don´t know the reasons for that but I´ve seen such T60s before. What do you mean by "it looks like ordinary Radeon driver"? What software did you use to view driver details? Now, if you use Autocad 2008 and you let it check your graphics, it would tell you that it´s not certified for CAD, which is strange. I know it from my own experience. I believe some update is required either for ATI ot for Autocad.
And something else: Radeon/FireGL driver packet from Lenovo automatically recognizes your device and installs. If the Radeon driver is installed (somehow), I can´t imagine how your graphics runs at all since Radeon drivers apply only to X1400 and X1300 and FireGL 5200 is based on X1600 (so you can theoretically install a Radeon driver, but only for X1600, which is anyway not available from Lenovo).
I hope this helps somehow!

Marin

[fix5]

thanks for opinion. Yeah, it is strange this thing about t60 aka t60p issue because actually under my screen is printed t60p.

regarding ati drivers what i mean is that they appear like ordinary catalyst drivers I have on my home htpc graphic card ati hd 2600 xt. There are slightly different and the main thing that is missing, and I had that on win xp, is option/tab with presets for cad/cam application like presets for autocad, max, lightwave, maya, open gl games etc.
Do you know what i mean?

[Marin85]

I see now what you mean When I moved to Vista I also noticed that the Catalyst Control Center has a bit different look and some features have disappeared like that you´re talking about. I was also surprised that I can´t set any of those mods (opengl games, AutaCAD, Maya, ArchiCad etc) anymore. I guess the new Catalyst drivers do it automatically. CCC has changed for Vista and we have to accept it, I think. Some things have imrpoved, for example the previews for all 3D settings are working properly now, I can´t remember if this feature was available under XP at all (in any case not for me). Probabely you don´t need to switch anymore between different mods.
Do you notice any difference in performance when running AutoCAD compared with the XP version of CCC?
As to performance I can tell that the gaming performance of ATI FireGL has been improved under Vista. I´m now able to run some games in max resolution, which wasn´t very watchable under XP But that rather speaks for a Radeon driver
A propo gaming, try to run 3DMark 06 and if your score is low enough, you can be sure it´s not a Radeon driver I mean it seriously With my specs I get 1600 marks, so you should be somewhere near me (according to your specs). Maybe it´s not the best verification method but it´s still something
As to your T60-T60p issue, I think that´s really weird! Maybe it´s just due to some stupid failure on Lenovo site that should be updated.

Hope that helps

Marin

[fix5]

Well, I did my homework and according to autocad hardware list support and drivers list, this famous xml certified driver list, Ati firegl v5200 is not supported as is in vista, like there are no drivers for them. So I suppose that Ati/Amd screwed this time.

And yes, actually performance are slower and not so stable and lacking of some display modes and antialiasing etc. Many CAD/CAM softwares are treating the card like normal game card have disabled some display option.

thanx anyway.

Has anyone else installed vista on t60p with v5200?

[Marin85]

Thanks for information. At least that answers some questions
FYI AMD/ATI doesn´t currently provide any drivers support for the Mobility Radeon under Vista (and perhaps the same applies to Mobility FireGL At least I couldn´t google out any further information).

Marin

EDIT: if you find any answers or some further information on this topic, please post it here. Thx! I wonder what graphic drivers Lenovo provide for ATI graphic systems under Vista.