GotNoRice
04-18-10, 02:37 PM
I have an old Compaq X1000 that I've had since late 2003 or so. I've kept it in great condition. I upgraded the ram from 256mb to 1.5gb, the hard drive from a 60gb 4200rpm to an 80gb 5400rpm, and the CPU from a 1.4Ghz Banias Pentium-M to a 1.7Ghz Dothan Pentium-M.
The thing that is holding me back on this laptop is the VideoCard. It has a Mobility Radeon 9200. When the laptop was newer I used to play World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2 on it, both at near minimum settings with barely playable FPS but it was workable. These days I mainly have older RTS games on there to kill the time when I'm away from home, games like Rome: Total War.
The main roadblock is the drivers. Something changed in the catalyst drivers where no drivers past 5.6 (June 2005) will recognize the LCD on my laptop. If I use newer drivers I have to keep the LCD at VGA resolution or use an external monitor otherwise all I get is garbled lines on the screen. The drivers I use are the Omega 5.6 drivers. The latest drivers from HP/Compaq are even older, from 2004 or so.
That sucks but at least the 5.6 drivers work well enough in XP. The problem is when I try to install Vista or Windows 7 (i've tried a few times over the years). The only driver I can install that works is to force the 5.6 XP drivers to install. The problem with that is that it doesn't work with any games at all, not even the older RTS games I play on there.
My friend had a similar issue with the mobility radeon in his laptop so I don't think it's something exclusive to my model. Has anyone else encountered this issue or found a way to fix it? Unfortunately ATI ended driver support of even the desktop 8500-9200 class cards after the 6.11 driver, but i'd still rather be using the 6.11 driver than the 5.6 driver =/
The thing that is holding me back on this laptop is the VideoCard. It has a Mobility Radeon 9200. When the laptop was newer I used to play World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2 on it, both at near minimum settings with barely playable FPS but it was workable. These days I mainly have older RTS games on there to kill the time when I'm away from home, games like Rome: Total War.
The main roadblock is the drivers. Something changed in the catalyst drivers where no drivers past 5.6 (June 2005) will recognize the LCD on my laptop. If I use newer drivers I have to keep the LCD at VGA resolution or use an external monitor otherwise all I get is garbled lines on the screen. The drivers I use are the Omega 5.6 drivers. The latest drivers from HP/Compaq are even older, from 2004 or so.
That sucks but at least the 5.6 drivers work well enough in XP. The problem is when I try to install Vista or Windows 7 (i've tried a few times over the years). The only driver I can install that works is to force the 5.6 XP drivers to install. The problem with that is that it doesn't work with any games at all, not even the older RTS games I play on there.
My friend had a similar issue with the mobility radeon in his laptop so I don't think it's something exclusive to my model. Has anyone else encountered this issue or found a way to fix it? Unfortunately ATI ended driver support of even the desktop 8500-9200 class cards after the 6.11 driver, but i'd still rather be using the 6.11 driver than the 5.6 driver =/