alternate drivers for v5200 and vista?

[marlinspike]

Given that I can run far cry at 1400x1050 I don't think the graphics card is the reason I have to run CoD4 at 1024x768 to get a decent frame rate, I'm thinking CoD4 simply doesn't like the firegl drivers. Are there any alternate drivers for the v5200 running in Vista yet?

[Marin85]

Are there any alternate drivers for the v5200 running in Vista yet?

Since you don´t mention what FireGL driver you are using in Vista, I assume it is the one provided by Lenovo. From ATI website one can currently download either desktop FireGL or desktop Radeon drivers for Vista (no support for any mobility drivers under Vista for your system yet). Before installing any of those, you will have to modify it using Mobility DOT Modder. This have been lately discussed a few times around here in the T60 subforum. I have had best experience with the modded desktop FireGL drivers (also highest 3DMark 06 score achieved with them).

Hope this helps

Marin

[marlinspike]

Vielen Dank! I'll look into it when I get a chance and give it a try. And yes, I am using the lenovo driver currently

[marlinspike]

Toll! Top! Super!

I still can't play at 1400x1050 with a good fps, but it can play it decently, but I now can play at 1280x900 instead of 1024x768. Basically, it gave me 15 more fps at every resolution level.

[Marin85]

but I now can play at 1280x900 instead of 1024x768. Basically, it gave me 15 more fps at every resolution level.

Wow, I didn´t know that these drivers can make such a difference (~15 fps gain is not bad at all ). Glad that you now have better gaming experience


Marin

[Marin85]

BTW, forgot to mention that overclocking the FireGL 5200 can give you additional 200 3DMark06 points, which would be probably equal to at least another 15-20 fps at your resolutions Unfortunately, with these temperatures even slight overclocking can be dangerous and will shorten the life of your ThinkPad.

[marlinspike]

How can I overclock it? Setting TP Fan Control I can overboost the fan by entering the value 64 (I know it says 0-7, but 64 works). The hottest it'll ever get is like 87C like this, while the BIOS fan control would let it get up to 100C, so I think I have some room for overclocking.

[Marin85]

In Vista you can do it using Ray Adams ATI Tray Tools. Even though Vista is not listed there as supported OS, I´m pretty sure ATT runs under Vista 32bit without problems (I guess the site was simply not updated). With Vista 64bit you will have to disable driver signature requirement on bootup for ATT to work properly (actually to work at all). The nice thing about ATT is that it unlocks a plenty of nice features of your card, not just overclocking

Viel Spaß!

Marin

[Marin85]

Regarding overclocking, you may also want to check ATI overclocking thread.

Cheers

Marin

[marlinspike]

Preliminary overclocking it only gets me about 8 more fps, which I don't know if it's worth the increased stress on the gpu because it still doesn't get me to a good fps at the native resolution, but there are other tweaks and also that was a very rough overclocking (438.5gpu and 418memory, I couldn't get memory past 420 without strangeness happening) where I just sorta dragged the sliders to see what I get.

I'll try some of the other tweaks and see what overclocking does for my 3dmark06 scores and post in the overclocking thread when I get some time.

[Marin85]

You should be very careful with overclocking. You should rise the clocks very slowly to avoid possible gpu damage. I don´t believe you can get past the clocks you posted. In order to increase the memory clock, you will definitely have to decrease the gpu clock. The best performance combination I could reach was 418.50 gpu, 463.50 memory, everything beyond that gave artifacts. Also, I found out that in this range higher memory clocks yield more performance than higher gpu clocks and if one goes down a little with the gpu, one can reach significantly higher gain in memory clock (for example 5 gpu clock down -> 20+ memory clock up).

A side note: it´s possible that CoD4 requires at that specific resolution way more performance than far cry

Marin

[marlinspike]

More experimentation reveals that overclocking only gives me 3-9 more fps, the lower increase being when the game is busier (i.e. when the fps is lower to begin with), so it's probably not worth the risk.

Here's the odd thing: I get artifacting in the loading screen of the first test of 3DMark06 with very little overclocking (I always quit it as soon as I see this because I'm too scared lol, so I don't know what would happen if I let it keep going), even though the gpu is much cooler during 3dmark than it is during gaming and that same amount of overclocking works fine for gaming.

It's kinda annoying how once you get artifacts in 3dmark you have to reboot for them to stop. I wonder why that is.

[Marin85]

Here's the odd thing: I get artifacting in the loading screen of the first test of 3DMark06 with very little overclocking

I had that same experience too. The artifacts would appear even if you have reset to the default clocks. In my case artifacts appeared when starting any graphics intensive game (i.e. other than Diablo II which is limited to 25fps anyway or minesweeper ). But with the next releases of ATT this bug disappeared, at least in my case, so I´m kind of surprised that you have experienced such issues. I´ll take a look to see how it would go with my machine when I have some more time and will then post back.
BTW, I agree 5-9 fps are really not worth the risk!

[marlinspike]

I turned on the setting that resets the clocks on exit and now if i exit ati tray tool and reopen it the artifacting will be gone.

As far as artifacting in 3dmark06 goes I can't overclock the ram in mine at all, even without overclocking the gpu - the ram defaults at 330 (but it actually clocks at 319.5 for some reason) and anything above 319.5 (the lowest it will actually clock to above 319.5 is 328.5) will result in artifacting in 3dmark, even though I was able to overclock so much for CoD4.

[marlinspike]

Actually, it looks like to avoid artifacting in 3dmark I can't overclock at all. Strange. I wonder why you were able to overclock so much and yet I'm not able to overclock it at all without artifacts. The temperature is nowhere near overheating.

[Marin85]

The artifacts you mention are due to buggy interaction between ATI Tray Tools (ATT) and 3DMark06. As already stated, this bug was gone with newer releases... I´m gonna check that out during the weekend.

Cheers

Marin

[marlinspike]

Ive tried a few different versions, including the latest 1.6.9.xxx beta released at the end of last month. All are creating artifacts in 3Dmark06 when overclocking. It might be because I'm running Vista Business 32-bit.

[Marin85]

I have just read the above mentioned thread again and I now remember what solved the artifacts issue: I went from Vista x32 to Vista x64. So, I have to correct myself, it is not a buggy interaction between ATT and 3DMark06, but between ATT and the "modded" driver for that specific card (Mobility FireGL 5200). The problem still appears even with Vista x64if ATT is enabled to start with the OS. Try out disabling ATT automatic startup with Vista and see what happens (but I doubt that this would help).

[marlinspike]

Hey Marin, I was running Windows Update as I periodically do and saw an update for the v5200 mobility with a listed release date of 12/11/2008 (meaning it's very very new). Do you know anything about this driver? It seem unusual for ATI to release a mobility driver when they already have a functioning one.

[Marin85]

Right now I have the default Vista driver installed (M$ WDDM or something like this...), so the driver you mention pops up from time to time in my windows update as well. I once tried to install it just to see if it works and it works, but it has an outdated version, means the version of the driver package one can obtain from AMD/ATI website is much newer. So, I guess this release date only refers to the release from M$, not ATI.
I am going to install it again these days because I´d like to try out all the new fancy OpenGL features of Photoshop CS4 (they doesn´t work with M$ WDDM) and I am going to then run some benchmarks (probably only 3DMark06 ).
I stopped using the latest modded driver from ATI because I encountered a bug with Vista explorer and am trying to nail it down. I´ll post some pics in the coming days but for now I´m not sure if it´s the driver or some nasty bug of windows explorer...

Cheers

Marin

[marlinspike]

Right now I have the default Vista driver installed (M$ WDDM or something like this...), so the driver you mention pops up from time to time in my windows update as well. I once tried to install it just to see if it works and it works, but it has an outdated version, means the version of the driver package one can obtain from AMD/ATI website is much newer. So, I guess this release date only refers to the release from M$, not ATI.

You're right, when I click more info it shows the ATI release date being back in 2007.

On the windows explorer bug, I think I've experienced it. It is somehow related to the Incomplete folder that limewire makes if the incomplete folder is on the desktop in my case.

[marlinspike]

Hey Marin (or anyone else with an opinion on this),

I'm going back to Win XP. Do you have any thoughts on what the best driver for gaming on a v5200 in WinXP is?

I still can't believe how much better fps I got with the mobility modder modified ATI driver than with the driver Windows update gives me on Vista. I tried going back to make sure I wasn't mistaken, and I instantly lost ~15fps.

[Marin85]

Hi,
3-4 weeks ago I tried to create gaming installation of XP as I had concerns about how well Win 7 was doing on battle.net and similar (it turned out to be my internet connection though). I tried newest XP drives from AMD/ATI, modded, but the machine was unstable as hell. I turned back to Win 7. I guess you should try out a few combinations for yourself. There are still older ATI drivers somewhere available and waiting to be modded, there are also the omega drivers for XP as well as DNA and some other "exotic" modifications. In other words, I don´t think much has changed here since the take-over from AMD.

Only my 2 cents,

Good luck and post back your results

Marin

[marlinspike]

Do you know off the top of your head the various available drives? I only know of Optima, the one windows update says to use, the one lenovo has, and using mobility modder to use the desktop v5200 driver. I'll google the DNA you mentioned. Is there anything else, like maybe using the X1600 driver somehow?

[Marin85]

A list of all drivers I´m aware of:
1. windows update
2. Lenovo ATI driver
3. modded desktop FireGL or desktop Radeon X1600 driver (there are different versions over time, the older ones seem to work better than the newest, but again all these are modified); btw, in Vista I was having best gaming performance and stability using the latest desktop FireGL drivers before AMD introduced FirePro. As for XP drivers in particular, I can´t really say anything more specific as I haven´t used XP for long time (probably almost 2 years).
4. Omega drivers
5. DNA drivers (AFAIK not very stable, Omega seem to be better and more stable).

[marlinspike]

Wow XP is a lot better. The fps varies a lot more during game play (i.e. the difference in fps between when a lot of stuff is happening and when I'm just running by myself down a hallway is bigger), but the fps is also a lot higher. On average about 10 more fps than I got even with the best Vista driver. This was with both the 8.293.1.0 driver that came on my rescue and recovery disks and the 8.362.0.0 driver Windows update had for me. I'm currently downloading the 8.533.3 driver lenovo has, but the difference was so big I wanted to note it before I forgot.

EDIT: nevermind. I guess I was remembering the fps under Vista wrong. XP is faster, but only a few fps faster.