Thinkpads Forum

One of the reasons I got my T400 with switchable graphics was the promise of being able to switch between a relatively decent graphics card for light gaming and a more lightweight one for extended battery life. I didn't realize that would get me shoehorned into a ghetto where the drivers lag several versions behind what ATI releases while I wait for Lenovo to update their proprietary package.

I've heard of people using the Mobility Modder, but I also thought I read somewhere that some of the later ATI drivers could be installed while retaining full compatibility with Lenovo's switching implementation. Is there any truth to this? Has anyone used it? Can users of the Mobility Modder weigh in on their experience.

I'm a little gun shy when it comes to fighting with graphics drivers on this machine--when Lenovo released their last update in December, I think I managed to either get the wrong driver or somehow screw up the install, which led to a cascade of problems like being stuck on the Intel side of the graphics and the ATI driver only installing the Catalyst Control Center and then complain about a driver version mismatch before exiting. I eventually had to resort to just reinstalling Windows to rectify the problem. It thankfully happened just before taking a week off from work for the holidays, so I had the time to fight with it, but as this is also my work laptop I can't really afford that downtime. So any stories of things working without a hitch will be much appreciated.

You read correctly. I'm using 11.1a on mine right now.

There's a few posts with instructions scattered around, can't find them at the moment. My overclock thread has the general gist of the install instructions in one line.

I thought it might have been a thread of yours--I even asked about your Windows theme. Just couldn't remember. Looks like it's simple enough to use the "Have Disk..." driver update. Did you install the version of the Catalyst Control Center corresponding to the driver as well?

So I know you might not have the best data since you're also running your system overclocked, but have you noticed any performance changes that you can attribute to the driver itself? Any problems driving an external monitor, switching graphics hardware, or going to sleep and resuming?

And do you know where to find old driver versions on ATI/AMD's site? The only version currently there is 11.2. Although I suppose I could give that a shot as well.

I installed CCC via the Core-Static .msi in the Packages folder (don't think any of the other packages are necessary).

No problems with an external monitor via VGA, switching works perfectly. Sleep and hibernate both work perfectly when on Intel (never tested while on ATI, but probably will work just fine).

11.2 should work the same. I didn't feel like going up to 11.2 from 11.1a, given that performance is up or down for different games. Performance-wise, I think games felt a bit faster (even before overclocking) but I don't have any hard data to show. Overclocking seems to be okay, but I can't figure out how to lock the voltages still.

Someone over on Lenovo forums reported something about Device Manager saying 'not for this version of Windows' or something. Running the Setup seems to alleviate it, although I don't like to have it install CCC because of all the extra fluff.

I'd like to not have to run CCC, but it's the only way I've managed to get the T400's dismal screen to look somewhat decent while on discrete graphics--I can't find any actual brightness/contrast/gamma settings within Windows that make any difference. I've do the same thing with the Intel graphics utility, though that seems to be a bit lighter on the resources than ATI's.