T4x Radeon 7500 Driver for Vista

[bill bolton]

I have discovered that the ATI Radeon 9000 driver that ships with Vista actually appears to work satisfactorily with the Radeon 7500 fitted to various T4x Thinkpad models.

The Windows Experience Index component rating for "Graphics" on my T41 lifted from 1.0 on the standard VGA drive to 1.9 using the AIT Radeon 9000 driver, and Freecell now plays at a workable speed!

The "Gaming" component rating is still 1.0, so the overall Windows Experience Index rating is therefore still 1.0

Cheers,

Bill

[danage]

cool! thank you for this information. how did you install it? do i just pick "choose driver manually"?

[bill bolton]

do i just pick "choose driver manually"?

Yes. It will automagically select the standard VGA driver for you when you do that, so you also need to deselect the "Show only compatible drivers" tick box, and then pick the Radeon 9000 (XDDM) driver from the ATI selections.

BTW, there is a Radeon 7500 driver shown but do not select that one..... it gives a very odd doubled up screen display!

Cheers,

Bill

[A-Ge0]

the radeon 9000 is no longer listed on my vista install maybe because i have tested many other drivers. is there a download location for microsofts' radeon 9000 driver?

[danage]

interestingly, i first installed the "radeon 9000" driver (not the mobility), which did not give me sxga+ resolution on the built-in tft. then, upon second glance, i found a "radeon mobility 9000" driver that is in the list. it's somewhere inbetween, that's why i must have overlooked it.

at any rate, it works fine. video playback is smoother at high resolutions, but in my opinion still not perfect.

i need more testing, but so far dxdiag says all features are supported. which of course cannot mean dx9, since the chipset doesn't have it.

anybody tried any 3d-games yet?

[jeffbl]

Have a T42 w/ 1024x768 15" screen with Vista Ultimate. Updated driver from standard VGA to the Mobility Radeon 9000 XDDM driver, rebooted, and re-ran the experience score thing. Stayed at 1.0. Dragging and switching windows is agonizingly slow. Very painful. Are folks seeing a significant improvement in window dragging vs. the standard driver? And an improved vista experience score?

I also just tried the non-mobility "9000 Family" XDDM driver and although it works, window dragging is still incredibly pokey.

[jeffbl]

Can anyone with a 7500 under Vista describe their experience of dragging and scrolling windows? Is what I'm seeing the same as everyone else, or is there something I'm missing? Dragging a window results in several slow repaints as I drag the window around, and scrolling in Internet Explorer is also incredibly slow. When I hit the down arrow at CNN.com, it takes about two seconds to complete the scroll - I can watch it paint from the top down.

[thitiv]

I'm using the "Radeon 9000 (XDDM)" that Bill suggested. Windows dragging & redraw are acceptably fast even in a dual-monitor setup.

[syedj]

After stumbling on this thread, I just updated my driver for ATI Radeon 9000 on a T41 (2373-9FU) to the XDDM version as prescribed above and their is significant improvement in the graphics performance, window dragging and redraw are definitely faster if not completely smooth just yet.

Thanks!!!

[jeffbl]

Drat - I don't know why I'm not seeing any improvement at all. It says it is using the 9000 driver, but there is no speedup for window dragging/scrolling for me.

[superstudent]

Hi
I’m using Vista on my T41 with a Radeon 7500.
I installed the Omega driver 2.6.87 (based on the Catalyst 5.12) three days ago and it works just fine. (I picked the driver manually after the omega setup was finished)
I had no BSOD or other problems till now. The only thing is that Vista shows a compatibility warning when I access the ATI control panel. But again, no problems.
Powerplay is working too. (Changing the registry value “DALRULE_ENABLESHOWACSLIDER” form 0 to 1 enables Powerplay on ac)
Finally, I have no games on my TP, so I can’t test 3D performance… Vista rating still shows 1.0 on gaming performance.
Anyway, it’s the best driver I found till now and ill keep it till there is a real Vista driver.

[skanky]

BTW, there is a Radeon 7500 driver shown but do not select that one..... it gives a very odd doubled up screen display!

im using that one atm, yes it gives a doubled up screen, but on first boot, it defaults the refresh rate at 43hz or something weird.

navigate your way into the display properties and 60hz and volia, perfectly normal.

[A-Ge0]

Is there any news about Radeon 7500 for Vista?
Here says that Ati/Lenovo/Microsoft are "working" on this
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... f307658880

[saux]

hi, tried the mobility 9000 driver on my t40+mobility 7500
it works, but no 3d.. >_<
very very bad luck here

[frankiepankie]

im using that one atm, yes it gives a doubled up screen, but on first boot, it defaults the refresh rate at 43hz or something weird.

navigate your way into the display properties and 60hz and volia, perfectly normal.

I used the Radeon 7500 driver, and it did exactly what you described.

I got doubled up screen @ 43Hz.

I navigated to the control panel, and set it to something like 70Hz, and everything was fine

Graphics has gone from 1.0 > 1.9

Gaming graphics is still 1.0


Thank you

[ryan1212]

Has anyone gotten ATI power play to work under vista??

I tried using xp omega drivers, they wouldn't install

I tried using the DNA ati drivers, got them to install, and the powerplay tab to appear with in the the control panel, but it would not enable powerplay. I checked all the registry entries and they were correct.

Any other ideas? Any way to force powerplay to work with the built in ati mobility 9000 driver most of us are running?