Confused re Mobility Radeon 9000 on Vista

MapleGrace

My Dell 600m has a 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. It ran fine under XP, but I've upgraded to Vista. Since then, I find that viewing a video results in a horizontal tear near the bottom (unless I make the window smaller), and I also find that my new external LCD monitor "shimmers" (it didn't seem to with XP). My graphics "experience score" is 1.0.

Yes, I understand that I won't get Aero and all that with the older video card. But I'd like to recover my video performance, and hopefully fix the shimmering issue at the same time.

So I've tried installing the XP drivers. I turned off UAC, used the mod tool 0.8.8.0 to mod the unpacked Catalyst 6.5 drivers (apparently the last version that supported the 9000 card), and manually installed them.

This seemed to work. Instead of my display driver saying " ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (Microsoft Corporation - XDDM)" it says simply "ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000".

However, I still get poor performance: tearing during video playback, shimmer on the external LCD, and an experience score of 1.0.

What I'd like to know is a) can these issues be fixed for me on Vista, and b) how so?

If the XP drivers are fine performance-wise, why wouldn't using the XP drivers on Vista also work well?

I read something about GART. Could that be the cause of my problem? How could I check?

I also read about PCI bridges. However, the page mentioned a second such bridge with specific device IDs, and I don't see it in my system devices. Should I be looking there?

Should I be using a Vista driver? Should I be using a later version (e.g. 7.10)? Should I try Patje's mod instead? Omega drivers?

What extra drivers should I be installing from Dell (since this was a clean wipe and install of Vista, not an upgrade)? Some sort of chipset driver? The Dell chipset drivers for my 600m are of course XP only. What should I be doing? How can I tell if I have the right chipset drivers installed?

I've spent 2-3 full evenings trying various things and reading a lot of forums, with no luck. I don't want to downgrade to XP, but I do want my video performance back. I should be able to run 3D apps such as Google Earth or SketchUp, even if not the latest games (I'm OK with that).

Any advice is appreciated, I am willing to work through things to get it working. Thanks!

Veridian3

Did you do an upgrade from XP>Vista, if so that may have caused a few problems. Clean installs are always better.

Regardless of this the driver you want to use is the Vista version of 7.10, second in the list here: http://www.driverheavendownloads.net/ati.htm

Unpack them and then run the mobility tool: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/

Make sure you follow the instructions on that page exactly. Finally install the drivers.

There is no need to worry about chipset drivers as Vista has some built in that should be fine, the graphics drivers built in are less than great though. As for XP drivers, all you need to know is they are completely different to the Vista ones on a code level and not designed to be compatible.

MapleGrace

Thanks. So 7.10 should work with Mobility Radeon 9000 (when modded)? With proper performance?

This was a completely clean install of Vista, not an upgrade from XP. I had formatted the drive and started from scratch. I've tried many video drivers, but I've been cleaning up with the driver cleaner tool.

I had tried to install 7.10, 7.7, and 7.4. All said "fail" in Catalyst when I tried; it didn't install. I will try again if that is what is recommended.

But in the modtool page, it doesn't list 9000 under the Vista section, it only goes back to 9500. My 9000 is only listed under the XP section. So again I'm confused... does 7.10 modded support my 9000 card, or not?

I do understand the difference between XP and Vista drivers. It's just there's so many options for me to try, I need to narrow it down or I'll be doing this for weeks on end.

Veridian3

Yes, it should all be fine. The modder adds a line to the driver letting it know to support your "card" and the install then works.

Let us know how you get on.

geraldmango

from what I know vista requires a fully compliant DX9 graphics card which the 9000 isn't. you will get basic support with a modded driver but nothing more, and that includes no support for AERO.

I followed this guide over here and i got a basic driver installed, but its about time for an upgrade I think.

Radeon + Vista user with Radeon 9250s and lower!

MapleGrace

I'm OK with basic support (no Aero), as long as it's hardware accelerated so I can play a video or use a basic 3D application. Right now, video playback tears, 3D apps are unusable, and my external LCD shimmers.

I will try again for an hour or two. It's either that, or downgrade to XP, or get a new laptop. But really nothing's wrong with my laptop except video, so I'd like to get it working well!

MapleGrace

Still no luck.

I used 7-10_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_5325.exe, unpacking to the standard location. I ran the modtool 0.8.8.0, successfully with no log.

I used DriverCleaner and rebooted a few times first. Then I tried to install from the modded setup.exe.

Catalyst installed fine, but the display driver did not. The ATI log says:

"Driver Install: the specified driver package was not installed for matching devices"

Suggestions? And even if this works, will I get decent enough performance to watch a video without tearing?

Because this thread suggests there is nothing I can do:

ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 in Vista

Spike

Hi,

there is indeed no way to get the vista drivers to work with the older cards. The Vista WDDM drivers require a card that supports DX9 at least. So the only thing you can do is install the xp driver.

MapleGrace

OK I understand that. What I don't understand, is why the XP drivers perform so poorly under Vista. They perform adequately under XP, of course.

At any rate, I bought another laptop this morning. Assuming I keep it (it's an Acer and it's dropping keystrokes, apparently it needs a BIOS update but there isn't one) then my problem is solved: I can run Vista on the new laptop and downgrade to XP on the old.

But I remain confused as to why I can't get decent performance with the 9000 even using the XP drivers under Vista. I understand that they use a totally different driver path, that they may crash the whole machine, but not that they can be so horribly slow.

Judas

The only way to get any form of "decent" abilities short of the VGA standard driver.. is to manually install the microsoft supplied radeon 9000 series driver..... but it already sounds like you've got the supplied driver installed.


Sorry, ATI isn't producing ANY driver for anything under a radeon 9500 series..... your kinda stuck with poor performance and issues....


there are a number of reasons why the performance of the 9000 is poor under vista in even basic gui mode.... the drivers from xp to vista just aren't "properly" supported.. it's basically a older windows model being in a form of "capability" mode just to give you some of the basic features.... the required drivers just aren't available to give you all you NEED to get vista running.... it's just the way it's all designed...

No different then getting REALLY poor performance if i force an installation of xp drivers on a vista setup on even a support radeon 9500+ card.

MapleGrace

I reinstalled XP on a bigger hard drive. I then installed the ATI Catalyst 6.11 drivers modded by the mobility modder. Yay, good performance in XP, no tearing.

So then I popped my hard drive with Vista back in, and installed the same modded XP drivers (no UAC, XP SP2 compatibility) and it can't even draw the GUI screen without taking a second or two. Menus and windows draw top to bottom over a second or two. Video plays in single digit FPS.

Yes, I understand the XP display drivers (XDDM) are running in a "compability mode" under Vista. But should they really be so bad, in terms of performance? It's the same driver code.