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I'm having trouble finding the best driver for my Dell's Graphics card

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TommyHolly

Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2003
Location
Chicago
Hello,
I have a Dell Inspiron 8000. Service Tag: J9CXK01

I just bought a new hard drive and now I'm installing Win XP Pro. After I reinstalled the operating system I would go into the device manager and look under the Display Adapters: "ATI 128 Mobility AGP" or something very close to that...

(That is what it said without installing any drivers after Installing Windows...)

Then I went to the Dell website and went to the customer support section and found the "Download Drivers" section. I found the driver for my system which was a general driver called "ATI Mobility 3 / Mobility 4". I installed that driver and now under the Device manager, under Display Adapters it says: "Mobility M4"

Is that the best driver for my system?? The laptop seems sluggish doing any video related activities?

Thanks for your help!
-Tommy
 
In what ways? I know the Mobility 3/4 isn't the fastest chip, but are you experiencing lag like when scrolling up and down pages or is it in certain apps of in a certain genre of apps? What instances do you experience lag?
 
Yeah, when I scroll webpages...even plain ones with just text and no pictures, it gets choppy sometimes.

When I play Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory the game practically freezes when there are a few people on the screen.

Keep in mind, I had no problems doing either of these 2 things before I replaced the HardDrive and installed new drivers. The HardDrive is 7200 RPM vs. the old one at 4200 RPM and it's way faster seeking for data now too! (So I know it's not the new HD). The only time I seen it act like this before is when I uninstalled the video card driver.
 
open your task manageer and view the CPU usage when scrolling pages...

what hard drive did u replace it with - did u get a faster 7200 rpm itachi drive or possibly a slower 4500 RPM hard drive?
 
I replaced my old sluggish Hard Drive with the fastest out on the market. A Hitachi Travelstar 7200 rpm HD. My speed in all areas has improved after the new hard drive. However, I'm stuck with the 32Mb Graphics card (Which was brand spanking new and the best at the time when I bought the Notebook.)

Sometimes it just seems sluggish even doing simple tasks like viewing webpages. I have not touched the notebook because I have been so busy lately.
 
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