What is the best driver?

juanymerja · Aug 6, 2006, 01:28 PM

What is the best driver for ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP if I want to play Knigths of the Old Republic I?
I have a notebook Compaq Presario R3000, Pentium 4.
RAM 512

kn00tcn · Aug 6, 2006, 04:23 PM

did you try playing it yet? see if it works (or works well) then continue tweaking

juanymerja · Aug 7, 2006, 08:08 PM

Yes, I have. It is too slow, characters looks like they teleport from one place to another instead of moving smoothly...

Jaden · Aug 8, 2006, 03:55 AM

I am using the newest (3.8.252 - Catalyst 6.5) Omega drivers. Working fine for me. Also, adding more RAM (if your BIOS/RAM slots will allow it) may help some if it isn't a problem with the M9000.

-- Jaden --

juanymerja · Aug 8, 2006, 09:17 PM

Every time I try to install an Omega driver (no matter which version) I get the INF error Video Driver not found. I even have try the DHmodtool without any result...

Jaden · Aug 8, 2006, 10:24 PM

The DHModTool is not necessary with the Omega Drivers as they are already modded for compatability with mobile cards. As for the INF error I'm not sure. I am on my work break right now, but possibly I will look into it tomorrow night.

-- Jaden --

juanymerja · Aug 9, 2006, 06:03 PM

Jaden, do you have a compaq notebook? I want to be sure before I try again with the Omega Cat 6.5 .

Jaden · Aug 9, 2006, 07:07 PM

No, I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 with a Mobility 9000 (not IGP) but it shouldn't make much (if any) of a difference with the Omega Drivers as they are modded to support the Mobility 9000. As far as I know it shouldn't make a difference with the Omega Drivers if the card is IGP or not as they support both versions of the card, but I could be mistaken.

One thing you could try is downloading the driver cleanup tool from:

http://www.drivercleaner.net/professional.html

Uninstall any existing video adapters you have installed. Restart your computer in safe mode so that Windows will use a standard VGA driver set. Don't cancel out of the "Found New Hardware" dialog box just yet. Now go to Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager->Display Adapters and make sure your ATI adapter is uninstalled, if not uninstall it now. Now run the driver cleaner and clean everything ATI except the IGP option. The tool will get rid of any remnance of your old video adapter drivers in your registry and on your HDD, including your previous attempts at installing the Catalyst and Omega drivers. Now you can go back to the "Found New Hardware" dialog box and follow your way through it. Now restart your computer in normal mode and install your Omega Drivers. Hopefully this will work. If this doesn't work let me know and I'll try to come up with another solution.

You also may want to try an older version of the Omega Drivers such as version 5.13-5.6 or so, because I've heard that newer versions can actually degrade the performance of the M9000 (I am actually planning on switching to version 5.6 to test them out). I have also heard (never actually done this though) that some people get better results from modding the files manually to support mobile cards.

Keep me posted on your progress and I'll continue to try and help. Good luck.

-- Jaden --

juanymerja · Aug 9, 2006, 07:46 PM

INF error with Omega Driver
I tried as you say, with the driver cleaner and all. But believe it or not, when I installed the Omega Driver I got the message: INF error Driver not found; like when you try to install an ATI official Catalyst.
Thanks a lot for your help.

Jaden · Aug 9, 2006, 09:31 PM

Hmm... Did you try with the older Omega Drivers? Say version for Cat ver 5.6 or so? And as a last resort if nothing else is working you can format your HDD and see if they will install on a fresh install of windows, if formatting is an option for you.

-- Jaden --

juanymerja · Aug 10, 2006, 11:17 AM

Jaden, I got it! I tried yours instructions with many version, and the 5.8 worked out all right. Thanks a million. Still Knigths of the Old Republic is not performing properly. Now all the graphics looks perfect. but it is too slow. The character movement is like teleportation...

Jaden · Aug 10, 2006, 05:13 PM

No problem, glad I could help! Does KOTOR use pixelshaders? It's been so long since I've played it I can't remember, I used to play it on my old Geforce 4 440 Go card so I would think the Mobility 9000 should be able to play it.... But if it uses pixelshaders try disabling them, that might make it run better. Also Anti-Aliasing (SMOOTHVISION), Anisotropic Filtering and TruForm (if the application uses it) you could turn off to gain a boost in performance. If it is still not working that great you could lower the quality settings for textures and mip mapping, although this doesn't seem to hurt performance much. And of course lower resolution could help. I'm currently playing Morrowind and it is a bit choppy unless I turn off pixelshaders (but I like the water reflection, so I don't anyway hehe).

Also try shutting down your anti-virus software and any other software that actively scans files you are accessing. Defragmenting your HDD and a good ol' registry cleanup might help some too.

-- Jaden --

juanymerja · Aug 10, 2006, 09:32 PM

So sorry, my mistake, it didn't work.
I only was able to install a control panel or something, but the adapter driver remained the same original one that came with the laptop.
This is what I'm doing:
1) disconnect the network cable, so there is no internet connection.
2) Uninstall all with the ATI uninstall tool,
3)then check the add/remove progam to remove anything i find there (if something is found).
4)Restart in safe mode (and here is the problem: windows doesn't prompt me to anything, it just install automaticly the original driver), then
5) go to device manager, and of course, i find the original display adapter driver installed again, so I uninstall it right there,
6) then I use the DriverCleaner and remove all ATI stuff except the IGP and reboot
7) but windows will install the original driver again, without pompting, without showing any window or option.
And no matter how many times I repeate the proccess, I always get the original driver installed again.
What's the problem with this compaq?

Jaden · Aug 10, 2006, 11:38 PM

You could try this. While in safe mode after you uninstall the original video adapter drivers, instead of booting to normal mode just install the Omega Drivers from there then boot to normal mode. Hopefully it'll work because when Windows loads it will see there is a video adapter installed and not revert back to the original drivers. If you boot to normal mode and get an error of some sort (worse case scenario a BSOD) just boot back to safe mode so the new drivers don't load and uninstall the video adapter and reboot again.

-- Jaden --

[EDIT] Also, which Catalyst drivers did you try installing? I'm guessing they were the newest (6.7) drivers? The newest Catalyst drivers that support the 9000 series are the 6.5's, the 6.6 and 6.7 don't support your card. You could try downloading the Catalyst 6.5 drivers, mod them and try to install those ones.

juanymerja · Aug 12, 2006, 07:55 PM

I have been able to install all the omega drivers, and the only one that gave me a littler improvement for playing Knigths Of the Old Republic, was Omega 5.8. But the game remains imposssible to play, too choppy, very low motion movements... I'm wondering, Is there someone who actually got to play KOTOR smoothly, using a Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP? If there is someone who did it, I would like to know how he did it.