New (unofficial) drivers for SuperSavage graphics chips

[Musti]

My only problem with the otherwise perfect T23 is the lame graphics system. I've been trying my best to squeeze every ounce of juice from this aging (err, obsolete) chip, and to that end I've discovered the unofficial unified drivers called Chrometal.

Here (Korean, might want to use Google's translate)

http://www.vga.pe.kr/view.php?id=dizn_pds&no=4

(There's an English readme there)

Standard disclaimers apply.

The drivers are not WHL signed (natch). But one click installation/uninstallation. There are some nifty tools like virtual desktop ability. If nothing else, knowing I'm using a driver made this month as opposed to 4 years ago brought me some happiness.

[dsigma6]

Outside of the nifty tools, has it made a difference?

[Musti]

Outside of the nifty tools, has it made a difference?

"I want to believe" like Mulder says, but so far, I'd say none. IE7 scrolling is still choppy (biggest pet peevee). Then again, I haven't run any benchmarks.

[dsigma6]

I guess we can only expect so much from 16MB. Switching tabs in Firefox has really bothered me due to the choppiness...I think I'm getting a new HP laptop..

[rkawakami]

...I think I'm getting a new HP laptop..

Stone the heretic !

[Musti]

...I think I'm getting a new HP laptop..

Stone the heretic !

Oh yes, I'll bring the stakes as well!

Before we stone and burn him though, regarding the Firefox issue, it helped me when I "downgraded" to 1.5.0.x...Firefox 2.0 is a bit too much memory/resource hungry.

[rkawakami]

...Firefox 2.0 is a bit too much memory/resource hungry.

Ah, another point for my decision to put off installing 2.0 on my T23s. I've been happy with 1.5.0.8.3.1.4.1.5... and the "measly" 16MB of VRAM.

[Bgradid]

The video ram size isn't going to make much of a difference as far as 2d windows goes

[covertash]

The video ram size isn't going to make much of a difference as far as 2d windows goes

I agree. However, I can't find any other explaination as to why there is stutterting when viewing webpages with a large amount of graphics.

Could it be the slow hard drives that most people still have that came stock with the laptop? Anyone who upgraded their hard drive notice a difference?

[Musti]

Could it be the slow hard drives that most people still have that came stock with the laptop? Anyone who upgraded their hard drive notice a difference?

No, for two reasons. The images are downloaded and rendered and cached into memory when you see them. The second reason is I have a new Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM with 8 MB Cache and pretty nifty seek times. The images still stutter on some pages when I scroll.

[Bgradid]

Could it be that you're using smooth scrolling in firefox and not in windows? My t23 is perfectly fine for loading and scrolling pages for me. Just that smooth scrolling spikes cpu usage through the roof.

[dsigma6]

Oh yes, I'll bring the stakes as well!

Vicious i tell you!

I'm going to get the HP notebook (if available) and resell it. I did some thinking and don't want to own a junker.

Does it throw the system off if windows has smooth scrolling and firefox doesn't, or vice versa?

Also, I have a 5K100 Hitachi drive- it has made a difference with load times certainly, but not with Firefox (as expected).

[Musti]

Take it from someone who worked at inside support at H-P. Go with Toshiba, Lenovo, Apple. Heck, even go with Sony. But I cringe every time I hear someone using a H-P/Compaq laptop. Too bad that Compaqs were "the" laptops, and H-P was "the" IT company.

Fx smooth scrolling is sooo CPU intensive that I've never used it in my G4 PowerBooks, and this T23. If I had a desktop, sure, I'd crank everything up. But I want my fingers and wrists to be as cool as possible.

Oh, and Hitachi drives rock.

[dsigma6]

The HP is strictly for resale, as it's an easy $150-$200 profit. They also have a $250 Toshiba Satellite...it's a budget machine, but I just might keep that one for myself. Basically I'll get a free laptop if I sell the other, so long as I get to Best Buy on time!

The Compaq laptops are so crappy it amazes me. A guy I work with bought one last time they had a big sale, for $400. The plastic is so cheap, it's flimsy, and screws are already falling out! The HP looks to be the same build.

[jruschme]

[quote="covertashHowever, I can't find any other explaination as to why there is stutterting when viewing webpages with a large amount of graphics.[/quote]

There's an interesting page at http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Tuning_Pageload which talks about tuning of pageload in Mozilla-based browsers (i.e., Firefox). It seems like a big problem, especially with Firefox 2.0 is the setting of nglayout.initialpaint.delay which may be set to too low a delay (i.e., 0, as some tweak sites used to recommend).

In my experience, it seems that setting the initialpaint delay to something more like 1500 or 2000 (1.5 or 2 seconds) may give an overall smoother page load.

[x3ss]

hallo all

I've been watching the forum for some time and decided to create an account.
I'm a t23 owner and I had no problems with it even if it is SH and a little cracked the corner where the hdd resides. i'ts a great lappy.
your forum makes the ibm support even better.

ok, 'nuff with the off topic.
i installed the drivers and i snooped around a little and to my surprise I've found that they are the actual old drivers bundled with some new drivers.
they make a little difference but not enough to make the video card support games. i play nfs porsche and it goes pretty well but when i installed UT2004 hell broke loose it looks great but every few seconds scambles the textures all over the screen and after a few seconds of that works good and then does it again an so on..the game it's hardly playable but shows that the card has a lot of potential if it wasn't for the crappy drivers.

will talk later on the forum 'cause now the post is getting a little too long;)

great job u'r doing here guys...

[Musti]

Aah, NFS Porsche...best ever.

You are a brave person. I wouldn't touch UT 2004 with anything older than an ATI Radeon 7500.

There's an old S3Tweak utility that gives the ability to overclock the S3 processor. I have it and ran it a couple of times, but decided against it as I don't want to fry the computer. Also, documentation/user forum is non existent as it is an old software/hack.

FWIW, though aging, the graphics chip held its own under Vista Basic. The option to have the full Aero was not available, and the system was not super fact thanks to 512 MB memory, but the GUI was as fast (or as slow, haha) as it was under XP. Vista comes with such bloat that it is not even funny.

[x3ss]

ut2004 actually works well except the drivers screw the textures around...the speed of the game is good with everything on low.
nfs porsche had a problem with some textures but these unofficial drivers resolved some of them.in porsche it doesn't screw the textures somehow...

PS: can't wait to try vista on my tp....as soon as i get some more ram

[ambientscape]

What does this new drivers do? I don't see any difference.....only a couple of features to change the resolution that's all. Anyone to refresh me on this??

[x3ss]

they are not new drivers...they are new but not the part for the SuperSavage IXC, that part is the same old v16.13.90.90 that is on the ibm site.
in this pack there are some other S3 drivers which are new but the legacy drivers are the same old ones...thow i saw an quality improvement though in nfs porsche, the lighting was smoother with these new drivers, with the "old" ones the light was something more like a stain on the ceiling of the tunnel. i saw no improvements in windows gdi or 2d mode...i'll look into it one of these days with some 2d ddraw games.