matasvytautas

Randomness,



Whatever I did to my computer, it ended up screwing up the hard drive. I didn't do a bios update like you suggested and I regret it now...Anyways the hard drive cannot be reckognized by BIOS. Strangely enough Windows start up disk does find the hard drive and even lets me partition it and format the drive partitions, while the Vista start up disk did in the beginning, but does not do anything with the hard drive except state the parameters. The hard drive is a stock HP- Seagate AT disk drive made in Singapore. So maybe the whole problem all along was a faulty hard drive..However, when I took the notebook in for repairs at the HP service center (awhile back) they stated that the computer has a memory problem, so maybe the bad RAM screwed the hard drive up...Since I have no idea if you can jump these things (desktops you can) I have no idea how to resurrect the unit. The codecs that I were using is the K-lite codec pack with the option for lots of stuff or everything (I can't remember exactly) Plus I used some stock DVD's that come with their own codecs so you can watch them without the packages..(Those worked great even without the codec pack) However, since the hard drive died, it could of been the culprit in it working for many reasons (oh, a bad sector might have had something to do with it.) Anyways I will be trying to revitalize the hard drive and if it doesn't work...then...Why would windows be able to partition a hard drive and load startup programs on it is beyond me..I thought once they die...they die...

Randomness

Hello matasvytautas:

Please Follow these Instructions carefully. Again, you also are conducting this repair under your own risk, etc and so forth.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When updating the BIOS: Make sure you have a charged battery and the system is plugged into the AC Adapter. Do not disturb the system during the Flash process.

You may want to print out this post for reference during the procedures i discribe.

You are going to need access to a computer connected to the internet with CD burning capabilities. You will also need 2 CD-R discs.

For the first disc, download the ISO image i have created from here:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5f8f68/
It is a CD Bootable version of the HP BIOS update utility. It is the BIOS version KA.M1.60. This BIOS update is intended for the Presario 2100 series notebooks with AMD processors.
You can make the image using Nero, or Roxio software, if you don't have any software available, you can download ImgBurn from here: http://www.imgburn.com/ and use that program to burn the ISO image file to CD.

For the second Disc, you need to download the Bootable CD ISO image for "DiscWizard Starter Edition"
From here: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html

Now, on you notebook, you need to enter the current BIOS. To enter the BIOS, Press F2 at the logo screen. Goto the "Boot" menu section and make sure that the CD/DVD drive is at the top of the Boot sequence list. Use F5/F6 to change the Boot order until the CD/DVD drive is at the top of the list. Insert the BIOS Update CD while in the BIOS menu system, and than goto the "Save Changes and Exit" option in the exit menu.

The system should now boot from the BIOS Update CD, and automatically reprogram the Presario BIOS without any user input. If all goes good, you will get a Green Box stating the update was successful, and the system will restart in 10 seconds.

Remove the BIOS Update CD, and put in the "Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition CD". Boot from that CD. At the main menu, click "Utilities" Click "Zero Fill Drive (Full)" and Click Next. Follow the instructions. Keep in mind that this process will erase all and any data on the harddrive. This process will take between 4 to 6 hours to complete. DO NOT use the "Zero Fill Drive (Quick)" method if you want to make sure your drive is fully low-level formatted to factory specs.
You can use either the Windows installation CDs, or the DiscWizard SE CD to make a new partition / Format the drive. If you intend on installing Windows XP, i would recommend using its Disc Partition/Format utility. Make sure you do a "Full" NTFS drive format.

IF you suspect that you have faulty RAM, Boot the Windows Vista CD, and use the Memory Tester in the "Recovery Options" menu (i.e. cancel the installation to get to the menu...keep in mind...different builds have different menus)

I hope this will help you repair your system. Good luck and Take care.

- Randomness

TheRemedy

I appreciate it, thanks.

Randomness

Hello TheRemedy, Welcome to DriverHeaven.net

It sounds like you need to clean out corrupt graphics driver files, and manually install the Mobility Catalyst 5.13b. I will try to walk you through it.

Download and Install DriverClean Pro from here: http://www.drivercleaner.net
But don't run it yet.

First, goto Add/Remove Programs in Control panel, and remove any and all ATI related software. (restarting afterwards)

After restarting, goto DriverCleaner Pro, and select the "Select Multiple Cleaning Filters". Than add all the ATI filters available. Click "Start".

Restart you system and run the program again.

Now that your system is Cleaned from ATI drivers, download and install:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/21127.html
Make sure you install this before trying to install the actual graphics drivers. You will need to restart your system installing (whether it prompts you to restart or not). Please also note, this programs does a "silent" install, but you can confirm it was installed by dowing the following:
Right-Click on "My Computer" and click "manage"
Click on Device Manager. In the right windows pane, expand "System Devices" and look for a device called "ATI RS200/RS200M/RS250M Accelerated Graphics Port" ;

If its not present, right click on the device called "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI Bridge", and click "Update Driver". In the Hardware Update Wizard, click the "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" option and click next. Then click on the "Don't Search, I will choose a driver to install", and click next. On the next screen click Have Disk.
Enter the path: c:\swsetup\sp28073\GARTnt.inf and click okay.
Pick the "ATI RS200/RS200M/RS250M Accelerated Graphics Port" in the new list, and click next.

Download the drivers from station-drivers, that contain the Mobility Catalyst 5.13b ; Again you can download them here:
http://www.station-drivers.com/telec...-2kxp-whql.exe
When you run the program, and still get the error again, you can manually install the drivers as follows:
Go back to Device Manager through the same method discribed above. Expand the "Display adapters" section, and right click on your graphics device, and click on Update driver. You will use the same method described above, except, you will need to browse to the folder that unpacked itself from the download, and goto:
82034xp\Driver\2KXP_INF\CX_29492.inf

Then click Okay. Select your Graphics device in the new list, and click next. You will need to restart the system whether it asks you to restart or not.

With regards to DVD playback --> you will have to only use VMR for DVD rendering playback. In WMP10 or WMP11 disable the "use overlays". These options can be found from Tools-> options -> Preformance Tab --> Video Acceleration...Click "Advanced"
Make sure you select the "Use High Quality Mode" option.

Media Player Classic, VLC Player , CinePlayer and versions of PowerDVD have been known to support full VMR support. Just make sure the options are set to "prefer VMR" for playback and disable anything pretaining to using overlays.

Good luck, and Take care.

- Randomness

TheRemedy

Thanks Randomness, it works GREAT, I appreciate your help very much. With VLC, and MPC, how do I select full VMR support? With MPC I go to View>Options>Output and select direct show video VMR9?? and in VLC I can't seem to find the options to change them. If can give me this info I'd appriciate it, thanks.

Randomness

Hello:
for MPC, you would want to use VMR7 or VMR9 "renerless" using the 2D or 3D rendering option in the right side of that menu.

VLC does have any specific VMR/overlay options, and i think it uses vmr by default. you could play with the output modules, and try "openGL" instead of DirectX to see what works best for you. click Settings--> Preferences --> expand Video --> goto Output modules. make sure the "advanced options" is check in the bottom right corner.

have fun, and take care.

Randomness

Has anyone read this :
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/ati_faq.php
More specifically:

"After installing the Omega Drivers on my laptop it crashes whenever I try to watch a video file or DVD...
The cause IS NOT the ATI drivers or any of my settings, the cause is a hardware bug, more specifically a BIOS bug. In the testing, many people already updated their notebooks with a new BIOS provided by their laptop manufacturer and the video problem is GONE! So I encourage you to go to your manufacturer's web page and see if a new bios update has been issued for your laptop, and if not, e-mail the manufacturer so they can rush out a fix for this. Sorry, but if they can't fix this, there is nothing me or ATI can do about it."

I suppose it could be BIOS related, but there is no mention of the Radeon IGP 320 or related chips having such a Bug. The Xpress 200M and some 9x00 mobility chips have known issues.
Concidering that the DVD playback issue seems rather defined at the Catalyst 4.10 // Catalyst 4.11 version boundry, i still beleive it is the ATI Catalyst Driver code to some extent.

slavy

hello,
I've got HP compaq nx9005 notebook with radeon 320m graphics card (Athlon 2600+, 1GB RAM 64MB used for the graphics card). I've got it for 2 years, but I've always had problems with playing action games. Before I wasn't playing much but recently it's become a real bugger. I tried playing colin mcrae 3.0 (not mentioning 2004), battlefield 1942 and some other older games and the problem is that I cannot get over 20 fps (measured with fraps) on the lowest resolution and lowest details.

I have drivers downloaded form the hp page ([color=black]ATI Mobility Video Driver for Win XP 7.91A, ATI Video Driver and Control Panel 8.003). Now when I did some research on the web i thought about instaling the Catalyst for Motherboards with IGP chipset (https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=293), but then I read somewhere that people had problems after instaling Catalyst (e.g. computer freed after the splash screen). [/color]

So my question is if you can suggest any actions I could take to speed up the graphics or recommend catalyst (or other software) that would help me to speed up the card, because I read that people are able to play even the newest games on that chipsets.

Randomness

Hello:

With regards to the Compaq nx9005 Business Notebook,

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...e/64_5600.html

I would recommend downloading and installing the newest BIOS update for your system.
If you have more than 512MB of RAM installed, i would also recommend setting the "UMA" to 128MB in the BIOS. (You can enter the BIOS by pressing F2 at the logo screen when the system is turned on)

With regards to drivers :
Anything newer than Catalyst 4.10 runs into DVD video playback issues using an Overlay renderer. However you could use a DVD decoder that supports VMR (Video Mixing Renderer) to workaround this (however this requires more CPU power)

If your looking for the best 3D preformance this chip (The Radeon IGP 320M) can handle, i have found that Catalyst 5.9 to provide the best benchmark results in 3DMark2001.
Newer Catalyst will provide better support for newer games, however they may run slower.

The Display drivers for under the "RADEON" and "Motherboard/IGP" are effectively identical, and both use the same INF / Driver code. So it doesn't matter.

If you don't feel like doing any driver modifications, but aren't too concerned about the DVD issues, than i would recommend the following:

Please refer to Post #154 on Manual installation steps, and verifying GART installation.
You may also need to do the "clean install" also outlined in that previous post.

1) Download and install a newer ATi GART driver for you AGP Bus from HP:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/21127.html
(it is a silent install. There will be no notifications it was installed. Refer to previous posts in this thread to check if it install correctly.)

2) Download and manually install the ATI Mobility Catalyst 5.13b (from station-drivers)
http://www.station-drivers.com/telec...-2kxp-whql.exe
DO NOT install the Catalyst Control Center. It is not support by this chipset. Instead, install the Catalyst Control Panel. The newest and last version of this can be found in the "Low-speed" download list in the "Motherboards/IGP" download section for Catalyst 5.11 (previous software/drivers) at http://support.ati.com


If you would like to use the Catalyst 5.9 drivers, you could manually mod the drivers, or use Patje's mod tool from here: www.hardwareheaven.com/patje.

Once everything is installed and working, i suggest setting all the ATi Control Panel Settings to "Optimal Preformance" or just "Preformance". But you'll need to experiment to find the best settings.

This chip is not completely compatible with DirectX 9.0, and does not have Pixel Shader 2.0 or other new features, so new games may run slowly or not at all. You could try using
"3DAnalyse" to help emulate new features, but i doubt it will help with any preformance issues. But it may allow you to play newer games.
Any and all Games built for DirectX 6.0 to 8.1 will run rather well if the system has enough memory / resources available.

Good luck, and take care.

- Randomness

matasvytautas

Thank you for all of your help. My notebook is back up and running (unstable but running).
I believe I will have to replace the RAM and hope that the problem will go away..If not I have no idea since the computer will run flawlessly and pass the memory test sometimes and other times it will lock up and turn off. Anyways, just to let you know that neither HP nor Phoenix nor microsoft offerred me the solution you did..Microsoft took no responsibility, HP said they do not support vista and that was that...So whatever company you work for is lucky to have you...As someone said earlier-THANK YOU!

swimtech

Awesome work here Randomness!

__________________
It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

slavy

Thanks a lot for a quick reply, I'll get to reinstalling drivers tomorrow and let you know how it worked out

Randomness

Hello:

Thank you all for your support.

matasvytautas: With regards to System lock ups in Windows Vista

I have found newer builds of Vista to be more stable on the Presario 2100. I am running vista build 5384.4 from the CTP preview. In older builds i have had trouble with lock ups caused by the IDE driver for the ALi/ULi southbridge 1535+. You can get newer drivers for this south bridge in the package available from NVidia. (ULi was aquired by NVidia)
http://www.nvidia.com/page/uli_drivers.html
You will have to use the manual installation technique discribed earlier. Although it is Windows Vista, you will do the same thing.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/uli_drivers.html
(you will probably have to restart 2-3 times for the installation to fully complete).
Make sure after everything is installed, you have DMA enabled for your harddrive, and that Vista is installed on a partition with about 10 GB free space.

As too memory....I have very very rarely encountered RAM that has been unstable. It is likely that the actual contacts on both the SODIMM slots and modules might have corrosion or damage. I would recommend cleaning them with ISOPROPYL alcohol. Please also follow standard anti-electrostatic procedures when doing so. However if the RAM is damaged, than replacing them would be the only alternative.
You could try www.tigerdirect.com or any technology store to find good prics on new SODIMMS.
They are standard 200-pin SODIMM PC2700 @ 333MHz. From the information i have avalable, the Presario 2100 can handle 1024MB max. memory, although i have heard some have success with 1280MB (1GB + 256MB).


I will be unavailable for about a week, but i will try to stay update with new posts.

Good luck to all, have fun, and take care.

- Randomness

IGP320Mproblem

Hi there I am really happy that you guys are doing this. I also have a Compaq Presario 2100, with a Radeon IGP 320M. I like to play warcraft and would like to be able to play iton my laptop. What drivers would you recommend. I am trying the latest version of Catalyst, and I also modded it.

It would be much appreciated if someone could help me out.

Thanks

Randomness

Hello:

If your referring to World of Warcraft, i beleive its Catalyst 5.9 or newer will allow this chip to play the game.
The simplest solution would be to look at the previous posts on how to install the Catalyst Mobility 5.13b that is available from the station-drivers download link provided in those posts. Please also remember to install the newest ATi GART AGP bus driver, which is also posted as a link in those posts.

Keep in mind that the Radeon IGP320M is based on the R100 core, and its graphics processing power is limited. However this chip can handle most DirectX 8.1 based games, and some DirectX9 games when enough RAM is installed (more than 512MB usually) and the UMA setting in the BIOS is set to 128MB (for 3D texture itensive games).

Good luck, and take care

IGP320Mproblem

Thank you for your help. I got lucky and installed Catalyst 6.8 with a moddThat made that possible. World Of Warcraft now runs on my laptop, and It runs well. I would like to thank everybody who contributes to this forum. Especially Randomness who help me out. I would like to help anybody else that has a problem with their Compaq Presario 2100, with this graphics card.

Thanks all,

IGP320Mproblem

-=aLeXz=-

First of all I would like to thank you all for this wonderful thread, this indeed was the reason to subscribe to driverheaven.net. I am a happy owner of a Compaq NX9005 business notebook and after a lot of reading I ended up just yesterday with th 5.13b drivers which work smoothly...thnx to you guys. (well the system freezes in movie playback but that is not a problem for me at the moment).

I have some questions to make concerning hardware issues. I would like to somehow upgrade this laptop. I was thinking of this bay http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...9&v=3#infoarea
and then this hard drive http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=3vnk . I would like to ask if this hard drive IS actually compatible with my laptop, and if this 7200rpm hd is going to give some major boost to the system.

thank you in advance,

Happy threading

-=aLeXz=-

__________________
[COLOR=blue]My current laptop pc [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]HP-Compaq nx9005 business notebook (DG194A)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ 1789.1 MHz[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]DDR, PC2100 (133 MHz), 2x512 MBytes, Micron Technology[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]128mb UMA shared graphics (320M)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 100 gig 7200rpm[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]BIOS=Phoenix Technologies Ltd. KAM1.60, 04/05/2005[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Northbridge=ATI IDCAB0 rev. 13[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Southbridge=ALI M1533 rev. 00 [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]OS=Microsoft Windows ViSTA Ultimate[/COLOR]

alexl55

@ -=aLeXz=-

The notebook cooler should work fine since it is meant for 15" laptops.
I'm dunno about the 7200rpm hard drive. I just say if your willing to deal with the extra noise, heat, and power consumption and have the money for it, then go ahead. I found the performance difference negligible when I upgraded from 4200rpm -> 5400rpm. I believe 1GB of Ram is more important than a faster hard drive. anyways, here is a comparison of Notebook HDDs dated Nov.2005. The 7200rpm drive perform better of course, but not by much. I think notebook HDDs are slower than desktop counterparts is because of the smaller data cache and the UATA/100 transfer speed vs. UATA/133 or even SATA300. http://www.storagereview.com/article...otebook_1.html

@ fourm mods

Is there anyways we can split this thread between driver development and general installation questions? I know that the IGP 3xx series is really crappy and frustrating to get the drivers right, even for advanced users. I've definitely had my share of problems. But it would also be nice follow to Randomness's developments and breakthroughs without fishing through 12 pages of posts. 12 pages means that this thread is getting quite long and increasingly difficult to find the right information. I've noticed that Randomness is repeating himself quite abit on issues such as which drivers are the best for 3D performance, for new DirectX9 games, for DVD playback, and for OpenGL.

Maybe we should a make complete and comprehensive HOWTO guide sticky so new readers don't have to fish through 12 pages of posts.

@ Randomness

Awesome work man!!! I'm very intrigued that Vista doesn't have playback problems using Cat4.10+ WinXP drivers. I'm planning to mod this laptop into a media center PC in the future and being able to run the Vista MCE would be totally awesome. My question is does Vista detect the amount of UMA shared memory correctly? I believe Vista uses the new WGF protocol (Windows Graphics Foundation? I think). Maybe it reads the allocated memory correctly.

I've been very busy lately. But once I get time, I'll have to perform the long overdue clean install on my laptop. I will test and hopefully re-produce Goldbird's success with copying a pre 4.10 ativvaxx.dll into a Cat4.10+ install and have Overlay working (originally posted on page 5 of this thread). If it works on the clean install, then I will try to get it integrated into the 5.13b installer or maybe do the replacement as part of a batch file.

I also plan to dual-boot ubuntu with WinXP when I wipe my drive (maybe I'll install Vista too). Randomness posted some stuff a while back about OpenGL in Linux and ATI's Xorg linux drivers. I read that all Compiz needs is an ATI vid card with OpenGl drivers and X.org. I really want to try out Compiz on my laptop, but I'm a linux n00b. Here's some pics and video for Compiz in action, it's totally blows Aero glass away. http://www.linuxedge.org/?q=node/58

__________________
Laptop
~~~~~
Compaq Presario 2100 series
AMD mobile Athlon XP 2200+ @1.8GHz
Infineon 2x256MB PC2100 2.5-3-3-? @ 133MHz
ATI Radeon IGP 320m w/ 32MB Shared ram
Laptop LCD @ 1024 x 768
Hitachi 5400rpm 80GB HDD
Windows XP Home SP2

Desktop
~~~~~
AMD Opteron 146 @ 2.80GHz (10x280MHz) + Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU Cooler
OCZ Gold 2x512MB PC3200 2-2-2-7 1T @ 233MHz 5/6 divider
DFI Lanparty-uT nF4 Ultra-D
256MB X800GTO@12p PCI-E Flash modded to X800XT@16p 540/560 + ATI Silencer 5 VGA Cooler
Dell 2001 FP @ 1600 x 1200 x 32bit @ 60Hz
Thermaltake Sviking Chassis + Antec Smartpower 500W
250GB Hitachi T7K500 SATA300 + 320GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA300 + 200GB Maxtor IDE
NEC ND-3240A DVD Burner
WIndows XP Pro SP2 + Mac OSX 10.4.7 JaS install (99% working)

-=aLeXz=-

I have allready installed 768mb of RAM and I forgot to mention that I intend to upgrade it as well by replacing the 256mb SODIM with a 512mb one. I must say here that my belief is trying to upgrade those notebooks that use the Radeon IGP 320M from hardware or software point of view is in general negligible. But since my laptop was rock solid stable for 4 years now, a small upgrade of HD space, HD speed, cooler environment, memory, and least but not last software improvements will give it a nice breeze of life.

Best regards to everyone,

-=aLeXz=-

ps: A great thanks to Randomness for all the good work. Have a nice vacation!

__________________
[COLOR=blue]My current laptop pc [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]HP-Compaq nx9005 business notebook (DG194A)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ 1789.1 MHz[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]DDR, PC2100 (133 MHz), 2x512 MBytes, Micron Technology[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]128mb UMA shared graphics (320M)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 100 gig 7200rpm[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]BIOS=Phoenix Technologies Ltd. KAM1.60, 04/05/2005[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Northbridge=ATI IDCAB0 rev. 13[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Southbridge=ALI M1533 rev. 00 [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]OS=Microsoft Windows ViSTA Ultimate[/COLOR]

Randomness

Hello:

-=aLeXz=-

With regards tot he cooler, its sounds like a good idea. With regards to the harddrive iw ould recommend a WD Scorpio (with firmware update) or a Seagate 5200 or 7200.8 series notebook harddrive. Both provide good power consumption, and preformance. A harddrive with a 8MB cache buffer instead of a 2MB buffer will also help if you do harddrive intensive tasks (video editing). Keep in mind, the maxium interface speed the ALi/ULi southbridge suports is the UDMA Mode 5 (100 Mb/s burst transfer)

I would also agree that a memory upgrade is recommended.
Both the CD/DVD ROM and harddrive bays use their repective industry standard interfaces. You won't need to worry about proprietary interface issues.

I have already upgraded both drives to a WD Scorpio 80GB and LITEON DVD+/- RW/DL drives.

alexl55,

With regards to Vista, the WDDM does not function with this chip, and reduces the WDF abilities. The "DirectX 10" diagnostic tool does not report the memory at all, but the "System Preformance Advisor" does.

I am having difficulty getting many DVD, and ATi tools/control panel / catalyst control panel working in Vista, largely from the new Windows API. Research/experiments in that area is slow because of it.

I may consider a development / streamlined thread in the future, but i'll need to take some time to assemble all the information. I'm also considering making some drivers to post on the internet, but i haven't had time to look for bigger file hosting. At the very least i could post INF code in the proposed development thread.


Good luck, andd take care.

- Randomness

-=aLeXz=-

Could you please explain that a bit further? Also are all 2.5 laptop HDs idintical in terms of dimensions? I dont want to purchase one that is not going to fit!!!

thank you in advance,

take care

-=aLeXz=-

__________________
[COLOR=blue]My current laptop pc [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]HP-Compaq nx9005 business notebook (DG194A)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ 1789.1 MHz[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]DDR, PC2100 (133 MHz), 2x512 MBytes, Micron Technology[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]128mb UMA shared graphics (320M)[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 100 gig 7200rpm[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]BIOS=Phoenix Technologies Ltd. KAM1.60, 04/05/2005[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Northbridge=ATI IDCAB0 rev. 13[/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]Southbridge=ALI M1533 rev. 00 [/COLOR]
[COLOR=blue]OS=Microsoft Windows ViSTA Ultimate[/COLOR]

Otaku Ichise

I would like to know if a readeon igp 340M can use lot heat or not and how much hours it is recomended to play on it?..

__________________
オタク イチセ

RDA2

Hey all,

I found this awesome site where someone has been busy modding the latest cats to run with the old control panel, rather than CCC. I am now running my 320M with catalyst 6.4 and the control panel and the gaming performance is quite good. The resources that CCC required become more pronounced when it is gone.

Give it a try.

Cheers.

Randomness

Hello:

All modern E-IDE 2.5" harddrives follow the same dimensions and interface standards. Just like the desktop 3.5" harddrives do for their standards.

For Information only: Unlike the 3.5" harddrives, the IDE interface on the 2.5" is 44-pin instead of 40-pin to accomadate room for power (+5V, Gnd, Gnd, +12V).

For the CD-ROMs, they also use a similar standard for the "half-height"/"mobile" CD/DVD rom drives. The interface looks different (its still IDE), but most modern notebooks use that interface. (it is also 44-pin i believe, but its connector is different than the harddrive connector)

So when you buy a mobile harddrive,it will fit, and will use the same interface. HOWEVER, some notebooks, like the presario 2100, will attach an interface adapter to the harddrive before it connects to the motherboard. When you replace the harddrive, make sure you take the adapter off the old drive, and put it on the new one.

With regards to operating temperature:

As long as the Radeon IGP 320M is not overclocked, it should run fine for as long as needed.
Keep the vents clean, and make sure the cooling fan(s) are running properly. Make sure the notebook is also on a flat surface so none fo the vents get blocked.

Take care. Have fun.

Randomness

RDA2:

I will look into the driver you posted. I doubt it will provide any resolution to the DVD overlay rendering issues, but it would be a good drive for those trying to run newer games on this older chip.

A note to all: Running Catalyst 6.5 or newer may make your system unstable. ATI took out support for the older Radeon GPUs, and this may cause system crashes when tryng to play games.

RDA2

There's been no change to the driver itself; just a slight refresh to the control panel to make it compatible with newer driver releases.... so you're probably right about no overlay support for DVD playback.

It's actually a decent chip for gaming. Just lacks the fillrate for high res or fps. But the TNL support lets it run just about anything, albeit sometimes slowly. Most of my games run fine with some tweaking though. One benefit of the newer cats is they allow you to save multiple profiles for both OGL and D3D, meaning you can customize settings for each game and apply the settings before playing.

Otaku Ichise

thanks for the info^^ oh yeah where can i download the best driver for Radeon Igp 340M? (of my laptop) i went to HP compaq site but the driver is diferent from what i had...

__________________
オタク イチセ

slavy

Hello,
I was trying to install some new drivers just as the randomness said, I've downloaded the Mobility Catalyst 5.9 from driverheaven downloads, I've downloaded the 6.4 version with old control panel instead of CCC, but each time I started instalation I got INF error saying that I the instalation cannot be completed because I may not have correct hardware or software. What am I doing wrong?

RDA2

These driver sets need to have their .infs modded in order to work with your chip. I believe Randomness has a post on this board somewhere with instructions on how to do this.

If you don't want to bother with modding, you have two options:

1. Download and install the 5.13b driver set - see Randomness' post for instructions.
2. Download and install the 6.4 IGP driver set - see one of my earlier posts for instructions.

Good luck.

Randomness

Hello Again,

Unfortunately, i haven't the time to make a dedicated thread regarding technical research of the Radeon IGP 3xx M chips. But I will try to do so in the near future.

For now, a technical entry regarding the Radeon IGP 3xx series chips:

Apparently the infamous ATi GART (AGP Bus Driver) version 5.1.2196.1009 isn't the newest GART driver available. In fact, its technical internal version is 5.0.2196.1009.
The GART driver is a single system file called "atisgkaf.SYS"

For what ever reason, the ATi GART (AGP Bus Driver) removed support for the Radeon IGP 320 and its mobile counter part in the newest version which was release in Catalyst 5.8.
Every GART driver in Catalyst 5.8 and above is the same version (5.0.2196.1015).

You can add Radeon IGP 320(M) support by inserting this line into the
"[ATI_AGP]" tag in the INF file GARTnt.inf:
%PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_700f.DeviceDesc%=CABO_Install,PC I\VEN_1002&DEV_700f
and in the "[Strings]":
PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_700f.DeviceDesc = "ATI RADEON IGP 320(M) Accelerated Graphics Port"

I have been using this driver for about 2 weeks so far, and have not encountered any problems. I have not tested if this driver would resolve the DVD playback issues, and haven't done so because there is little evidence to suggest that it is the direct source of the problem. (I am currently using the Catalyst 4.4 driver provided from the HP website on my Presario 2197ca with this newer GART driver.)

I have also determined that "hybrid" driversets can become considerably unstable because all the individual driver modules are directly dependant on the core driver files
ati2dvag.dll & ati2mtag.dll
Using newer modules won't necessarily allow preformance improvements because the core drivers don't make reference to all the new features. And in some cases, can be completely incompatible (like using a hybird of Catalyst 4.x and 6.x files).

I have also discovered that the AGP Apeture size is automatically managed by the BIOS code, and sadly, does not provide the option to change it. It seems to use a ratio of 1:2 with respect to Apreture size to UMA graphics memory. (ie 64MB of Graphics memory will have an automatic 32MB AGP apreture)

Current experiments have determined a likely path of the DVD preformance issue:
ativaxx.dll --> ati2dvag.dll --> ati2mtag.dll --> Windows Kernel --> AGP hardware interface.
However, there is an "oemdspif.dll" which is referred to as an "ATI Driver interface DLL" in most catalyst versions. I am unsure how this plays a role in the driver interface with the windows kernel. But changing the oemdspif with the original laptop driver version didn't seem to correct the problem.

I am unsure of where exactly the bug lies. Although i have found it strange that Windows Vista is capable of using newer Catalyst drivers (suggesting the Windows XP kernel)
BUT...everything worked fine up to Catalyst 4.10 for Windows XP.

At this point i think i will do a very detailed comparative analysis on the ATi Catalyst 4.4 drivers and the OEM Catalyst 4.4 drivers from HP. Perhaps than i can determine potential "hardware interface" specific code, that can than be adapted into a mod for newer drivers.

Take care, and good luck.

- Randomness