garykowk

alexl55
how to pm you in chinese?
give me you msn?
you have some question need you help.
hoho
good luck all.....^^

Randomness

Hello:

Finally, with some time off, i was able to play around with the drivers, and some dvd decoders for the Radeon IGP 320M. I have finally figured out a solution that seems to work, and seems to follow with the previous information this thread has presented.

1) Catalyst drivers newer than Catalyst 4.10 have overlay / frame buffer issues specific to this older chipset (IGP 300 series). Unfortunately, i cannot reverse engineer such driver code, outside of simple modding, to fix the problem (because of legal, and technical reasons).

2) Different computers use different DVD Decoders. Some decoders strickly use DirectX 9.0 componenets, like DXVA 9, dispite acceleratin settings listed in WMP10 and other popular players. (Albiet MPC 6.4 seems to get around this, probably because it has its own decoder). As previously said, this chip isn't very fond of DirectX9.0. I have found that InterVideo is one of these decoders that DOES NOT allow overlay, or its DirectX9 to be disabled, simply by its design. Despite what options may appear to be available in WMP10 or Intervideo's own player.

WMP10 does not have its own decoder, it uses the decoder from an installed
DVD program or plugin such as Intervideo, PowerDVD....etc. ; And WMP10's acceleration settings are not always keyed to certain decoders installed.

3) I have had success with installing Catalyst Mobility 5.13, and using the PowerDVD SE decoder. My BIOS UMA setting is 128MB for the Radeon IGP 320M and i have 896MB Ram with Athlon-XP Mobile 2800+. Display settings at 1024x768 at 32bpp. WMP10 --> Tools --> Options --> Preformance --> Video Acceleration --> Advanced --> Use the following settings:
Check--> Use Video Mixing Rendering (VMR)
UNcheck--> Use overlays
Check--> Use high quality mode
Check ALL under legacy video renderer
Under DVD video:
Check--> Use VMR
UNcheck--> use overlays
Check --> Enable full screen controls, and Enable full screen mode switch.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You will probably encounter problems if you disable VMR and/or high quality mode, where the movie will be choppy, or not play at all. Make sure VMR in Video acceleration and DVD playback is enabled.

You may also Check any preferred options on the upper right hand side with regards to video smooting, full screen controls, Frame Drop/AV sync.

THE KEY ISSUES lie in 2 specific places:
1) The driver not properly supporting video overlays
2) The system's installed DVD decoder not properly disabling use of overlays through acceleration settings. Usually because of the decoder's program design/implimentation.
So far Intervideo has been problematic, and has not properly played DVD with newer Catalyst drivers. However:

Successful playback with PowerDVD SE (an older version of the newer PowerDVD), and it is also likely that CinePlayer Plugin DVD decoder would work too. I would strongly recommend DVD decoders that do not have DirectX 9 as a minimum requirement, and the lowest processing requirments.

Despite overlays being disable, the functional decoders still take advantage of the IGP's DVD processing abilities (i.e. with iDCT, de-interlacing, and so forth), and processing usage shouldn't go about 40% on average.

Hope this is helpful, and maybe brighten's your outlook into using the IGP 320M and related chips.

Have fun, good luck, and take care.

- Randomness.

nerothos

First of all, a big THANK YOU, to everyone posted in this forum. I got many answers on questions I ve been having for months (if not years). I was so suprised to come across this forum while googling for some help on oub beloved 340m. I am a happy owner of an Evo n1020v, (specs: pentium m 1.8 256 ddr266 removable --in which I added another 512--, radeon igp 340m) which has kept completelly satisfied for the 2,5 years I have it. Like many others, I do not have any money to spare to get a new notebook (desktops is out of the question cause I am travelling a lot). So instead I spared some euros and got an extra 512mb memory. So now I have a 512 + 256 (-64 for the 340M) of memory.
I have bought wow and before activating (I need to pay an extra 30 for the gamecard) I had no idea if it would play or not. Now I think I might be ok..
I went to the link that alex55 recommended and I downloaded the catalyst drivers. But then I clicked on mobility, and in the window it had the catalyst 6.2 drivers. (?!!?>!?) Whats up with that? Is there something I didnt notice? They were uploaded some days ago. What do you say ?

Also with my current specs, you think I d be ok in wow? Up until now I have faced no sort of problem with the drivers in dvd playback or in the wow video that plays before the game.

Again, meaning it will all my heart, a big THANKS to you guys. Alexx55 and Randomless. You are the reason I registered in this forum.

luixyz

Thanks alot for you guys findings, it is nice to share knowledge especially good ones.

I have been playing with the 320M / U1 since I first got my presario 908EA.

Years back, I have tried to use unsupported driver with this and have some luck like using 7200 driver to run the 320M. Then run 3dmark 2001 to show its functioanlity. There is slight increase in marks but the main thing is that to prove the driver will work with gaming envirnoment.

Now I am following with DHmodtool3 mod and other works with the chipset. I am using the driver with intregrated chipset for ATI motherboard 6.14 and the mod, first to install the 320m chipset driver, get the 320m platform working, then run 3dmard and CS to check the functionality.

However there is a problem with OpenGL mode on CS but no problem with 3dmark01. And Direct 3D mode is not smooth ~ which I am sure 320m can deal with cs smoothly.

Then using the old trick again force install the radeon mobility 7500 driver. This is achieved by just clicking undate driver from the driver's tag. Why not install the 7500 driver in the first place? There is possibility that the system will crash if you install 7500 straight away due to 320m IGP is responsible for other system interconnects as well.

Then CS can be run in OpenGL mode, and I have installed Doom 3 just to check for the interesting party that it will run Doom3 with all the advance features turned off (playable but not recommended) This proves that the driver mod for mobility 7500!

I am unaware of the MPEG2 problem, maybe this can solve the driver problem for 320M just let me know if you can be bother to try this mod, surely it is worth a try.

PS, my compaq presario 908EA only can support share memory upto 64MB, is there anyway to mod the bios to support 128MB? Or will I have anyluck to flash my bios with the nx9005 one?? I dont want to kill my laptop yet, anyone knows?

Randomness

Hello:

nerothos --> When you Go to this website http://www.station-drivers.com/page/atidriv mobility.htm, You will need to scroll down to "--- Pack Catalyst 5.13 (8.203) ---" ; the details are listed in french. I will try to link to the file here:
http://www.station-drivers.com/telec...-2kxp-whql.exe
After some testing with 3DMark2001, i have found using patje's V3 mobility modder and Catalyst 5.9 provides better preformance than the newer 5.13, but only according to 3dMark2001. I have also noticed that the IGP 320M tends to operate slower on the newer Catalyst drivers (6.x), but I have not started investigating this issue....and i doubt it would make too much of a difference, anyway. It seems Catalyst 5.6 to 5.9 provide the best preformance, anything older or newer tends to score lower on 3DMark2001.

From what I have heard from the posts on this thread, Catalyst 5.13 and this chip seem to be able to handle WoW. But i cannot guarentee this. I would also recommend a lot of memory, as it seems to help.

luixyz --> I am not sure what yo meant by:
"Now I am following with DHmodtool3 mod and other works with the chipset. I am using the driver with intregrated chipset for ATI motherboard 6.14 and the mod, first to install the 320m chipset driver, get the 320m platform working, then run 3dmard and CS to check the functionality. "
The version 6.14 is usually referring to 6.14.10.xxxx with regards to the internel 2D primary driver file of the Catalyst driverset. Which makes it difficult to narrow down its catalyst version.
I have also encountered some probelms with OpenGL when modded drivers are not installed properly. Usually the best fix is to unistall and clean out the drivers, re-install your notebook drivers, and than "update" those said drivers through Driver manager with modded drivers. I would not recommend using the Catalyst 6.xx versions....yet.
Using drivercleaner Pro after a normal unistall usually provides better results.

Like i said earlier, the DVD playback problem is specific to the computer's DVD decoder software being able to render playback without the use of overlay, or newer directX features. Some decoders, like those from Intervideo, strickly use overlays and DirectX 9 DirectShow components. The best way to find a new software decoder if to look at the system requirements. Usually older CinePlayer plugin for WMP10, or powerDVD versions work well with modded drivers as they use the DirectX 7 or 8.1 directShow functions, and they allow the option to disable the use of overlays.

With regards to the Compaq Presario 908EA, the newest BIOS i could find is from 2003, and is version "F.0B", and i am unsure if that allows for 128MB of ram. Please also note than some of the older BIOS will allow 128MB only when enough memory is installed. I would think that 512MB should be enough to allow the option for 128MB to be set for the IGP's UMA. Unfortunately it could also simply be a a limitation by motherboard's design, or the version of the IGP's own BIOS, which updates for are next to impossible to find.

For the record, the IGP 320M Graphics core was based on the R100/RS100...etc related cores, which is the fundamnetal core of the Radeon 7000/7500 and early 8000 series cards. That would probably be why you've had luck by forcing that catalyst driver configuration on them. Plus the catalyst driver model itself is pretty much the universal for all Radeon chips, aside from a few tweaks specific to certain chips here and there. But i should also point out: that by using the desktop Radeon 7500 configuration would disable any power-saving feature that the IGP 320M has, and may shorten battery life.

Anyway, Hope this was useful. If you need any more information, just ask. Take care, good luck. Have fun.

luixyz

Hi Randomness

Yes I get what you mean as I know 320m is based on 7500 architecture and driver is universal, that is what I wanted to point out but my literature was bad, forcing 320m to 750 mobility was what I had done and it will work with games, and the problem still lies on overlay and MPEG2 playback as you have explained detailly. I think this is due to the fact that ATi changed the core source code that used to work with our beloved chipset. By reading other articles in the forum, some people are experiencing problems with the mobile firegl chipset, they are having problem with the opengl features as well, so I am starting to wonder is that possibly a "bug" inside newer catalyst?

Thanks for your reserach on my 908, I have already have the latest bios long time back, and I have 512MB ram but there is still no luck with 128MB UMA but that is life...

One last question, so it is best to install catalyst 5.12 with mobility mod? Will that version provides opengl capability with smooth MPEG2 playback without problem? (I meant the latest stable catalyst version for 320M)

Many thanks

Randomness

Hello Again:

All Catalyst driversets have OpenGL support / modules. And in theory should work with the chip, but you may need to clean out any debris from previous driver installations. I would recommend drivercleaner pro.

It would seem that the Catalyst 5.13 mobility that Alexl55 found, and its file link posted in my last reply, would work for OpenGL for CS and WoW ; However MPEG2 playback would be relative to the installed DVD decoder software, and its ability to run without the need for overlay. If you have PowerDVD or CinePlayer plugin or some other DVD software decoder that doesn't require strict overlay support, or DirectX 9, you should be able to play MPEG2 and DVD's with the Catalyst 5.13 Mobility by enabling VMR ( video mixing renderer) and disabling use of overlays.

The newer Catalyst drivers has 2 OpenGL driver components built in, and i think you can get a utility to switch which one the chip would primarily use. The second (larger filed size) seems to work better with the IGP320 ; The OpenGL components of the driver have the file names atioglxx and atioglx1 or something of the similar.

Good luck. Take care, have fun.

patje

Hey guys,

There is something I've noticed between the normal catalyst files beiing modded by me and the mobile catalyst drivers provided by ATI.

The thing is, some cards use an extra OpenGL driver file, named ATIOGLGL.DLL
So far i've learned the following cards use the extra file:

Cards that use it:

MOB RAD. 9500/9600/9700 (M10)
MOB RAD. FIRE GL T2/T2E (M10GL)
MOB RAD. X300 (M22)
MOB RAD. V3100 (M22GL)
MOB RAD. X600/ X600SE (M24/M24C)
MOB RAD. X700 (M26)

Cards that don't
MOB RAD. X800 (and X800 XT)
MOB RAD 9550
MOB RAD 9800

So aside from both Atioglxx.dll and Atioglx1.dll some cards use an extra file.
At the moment i'm unsure what the extra file will do.
I only have mobilty radeon 9000 I can test with and I'm not sure if this card is one of those that use the extra file.

UPDATE: I've installed the Moblie 6.3 drivers on my Laptop (after slight modification).
The driver installed the ATIOGLGL.DLL however everything seems the same as before.


/goes back to the batcave..

__________________

Randomness

Hello:

It is an interesting puzzle about how OpenGL is implemented in the ATi Catalyst drivers.
I have found that the atioglgl.dll has been mentioned in the Catalyst Mobility 5.13 INF, but its registry settings are nulled, and the file isn't included with the driver package.
However it does make reference to FireGL cards / chips, and any PRO or other "special" edition of various cards including the following cores:
M9, M10, RV250, M22, M24/C/GL, M26/GL, R300GL, R350GL, RV370, RV380, R4210, R423, RV410
* wrt to only the Catalyst Mobility 5.13 that Alexl55 discovered earlier in this thread.

In theory it was supposed to be used with 9000 Series (RV250) and newer, but again, it was nulled in the Catalyst Mobility 5.13 that I have been recently playing with. I suspect that it is a suppliment file for CAD programs intended to be run with the FireGL cards or certain "special" edition radeons from 9000 series and newer. Perhaps ATi changed their mind in the newer 6.x versions about supporting certain cores i listed.

luixyz:
At the moment i have encountered a similar OpenGL error that you discribed, it just took a a more detailed diagnostics. It has something to do with the registry settings employed for OpenGL from a modded Catalyst driverset. For some reason the OpenGL driver from ATi is not initialised properly, and the system ends up using the Windows renderer....which barely supports OpenGL 1.1.
It would seem that this Epic legacy is still on going. I am hopeful that after studying the INF code from original and modded drivers i can trace the bug, and perhaps provide some insight for future mobility mods.

Anyway, Good luck, stay tuned, and take care.

Randomness

Hello:

I have discovered that Windows Vista will probably provide driver support for these chips (significantly newer drivers based on the later 5.xx catalyst driversets), and with the new WDDM, it is likely that future Catalyst driversets for Vista will be able to be easily adapted to be used with these chips. Although i cannot confirm this, so it would seem we'll have to wait and see when the new OS ships later this year.

In other news, i have explored an interesting glitch previously posted by luixyz, and patje. OpenGL components in the newer driver models aren't initialised properly when modded. Unfortunately i have yet to route out the complete cause, and have temporarily reverted to my original notebook drivers until i get more time to play with the INF file. ATi has changed their OpenGL component module at least 3 time from versions 4.4 to 6.2, and i still can't completely figure out why some cards require different / more modules, while others don't.

I have tested my original idea on replacing indivudal components of the drivers with newer ones. i.e. put in a newer Direct3D module into an older driverset, and haven't found much improvement in 3D proformance. I am guessing the miniport and the main display driver need to be updated inorder to take avantage of the newer code.

Anyway, take care, and have fun.

- Randomness

Goldbird

Hello guys,
I've managed to locate the dll which is reasponsible for the video playback crashes.It is the ativvaxx.dll .I've installed the latest omega drivers (2687) which are based on 6.2 catalyst drivers and there was an increase to graphic performance according to 3dmark.(the previous were 4.10 catalyst drivers).Then, in safe mode, i replaced the new dll with the old one (from 4.10 catalyst drivers dated 20 january 2004) and video playback run perfect . I've tested PowerDVD 6.0 and mediaplayer (whith overlay enabled) and everything run smoothly! Then i run 3dmark2001 and WoW and the performance was as if i run 6.2 catalyst(and eaven better). I'll try with 5.9 and 5.13 ati catalyst to see which driver performs better on our chipset. If someone wants to try and cant find an old dll, i can e-mail him my ativvaxx.dll.
Take care

patje

Hi Goldbird, wow, if that can help others you did a great job!
Curious if this will work for the others...
thanks for the info

__________________

Randomness

Hello Goldbird:

The ativvaxx.dll is the "Universal Radeon Video Acceleration" Driver component. So it would definitely make sense if this is the problem with the driver. I well run a few tests soon, and hopefully be able to confirm your success.

Unfortunately, i have been busy lately with assignments, and have managed to get myself further distracted by playing arround with Fedora Core 5. Although i can say that i have had some success with the new ATi XOrg proprietary drivers and DVD playback. Albiet i don't have any intense 3D games to test it with.

If you have a game or diagnostic utility that can Use OpenGL, could you check and see if it works properly ; ie// using the OpenGL component of the ATi driver rather than the less happier version built into WindowsXP. I have been investigating a rather spontaneous glitch in some driver mods where OpenGL doesn't register properly with certain installations.

Thanks, and take care.

alexl55

Awesome!!!! I'll test this on 5.13 after work.

UPDATE:
My inital results are positve. Overlay works now. I'm not sure if the frame buffer value is fixed now, since I don't have control center installed anymore. Good discovery Goldbird.

So Patje can this "hack" be implemented in the new Mobility Modder? Maybe like the soft-mod option in Omega drivers, where it asks whether to install the hacked or non-hacked version.

__________________
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)

tdp

Hello Randomness/all,

I'm glad I have managed to find this forum. I'm looking to make Sony Vaio a Linux only unit. At the moment, I'm using the elive 0.42 distro. Debian based, X.org 6.8, Cedega CVS, with enlightment as a frontend/window manager.

Anyway, you stated above that you are trying o use the IGP3XX chipset with linux. You can try this configuration - just edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following:-
Section "Device"
BoardName "RS200 4337"
Driver "radeon"
Option "AGPFastWrite"
Option "RenderAccel"
Option "EnablePageFlip"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
VendorName "ATI"
EndSection


Hope this helps you in your quest. This config is stable and works well both in 24bit (v.slow) and 16bit mode (much faster). If you can suss out any further stable performance boosts let me know. I know of a couple of other configs that add an additional 30% performance boost (figures based on output from glxgears), but these will crash your system within 10-40 seconds - graphics do fly during that period though - so maybe there is more to be gained from this chipset, under linux.

Peace out.

P.S.

Try Amercias Army - it's commerical quality. I have not tried it yet, but from what I have seen it will give your IGP chipset a good work out. BTW - it's free!!!!