Problems with Mobility radeon 9700... Catalyst 7.8 drivers aren't compatable

[l-_-l]

EPIC - problems with MOBILITY radeon 9700.

i tried running catalyst 7.9 & 7.10 because 7.8 doesn't work... it says it can't find any hardware on my pc that the drivers are compatable with.

heres my rig.

Manufacturer:  	
Magnell
Processor: 	
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+, MMX, 3DNow, ~790MHz
Memory: 	
1024MB RAM
Hard Drive: 	
100 GB
Video Card: 	
RADEON MOBILITY 9600/9700 SERIES (DNA-ATi 4.1.5.7)
Monitor: 	
Plug and Play Monitor
Sound Card: 	
Realtek AC97 Audio
Speakers/Headphones: 	
Keyboard: 	
USB Root Hub
Mouse: 	
USB Root Hub
Mouse Surface: 	
Operating System: 	
Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)

The problem im having with the game is that it is a kernel.dll crash [because of bad drivers?] . Its fine through the intro, menu and setting up the game. The menu is really weird color.... all forest green and brown [like waay to much alpha] ... but it lets me start a game. After i click to start the game it freezes up [black screen] at irregular intervals and if i manage to get out of the demo fast enough it shows that the demo has killed my vpu. because of a kernal.dll crash.

I have tried all the workarounds and the fixes and new drivers and changing and deleting the engine.ini but nothing works.

here is my dxdiag



and last but not least my log


Thank you and please fix ! I love the series, and i really want to like this one also!

[l-_-l]

bump for the day

[rickatnight11]

Some mobility Radeon chips are manufacturer specific, and ATI's detection utility will not find them. Instead you need to downloaded the latest drivers from your laptop's manufacturer's website. If they don't go about 7.8 you may be in a hole. Maybe some third-party drivers will help but don't quote me on it.

By the way, I have the same crashing issue with my Mobility 9700/9600 and I'm running Catalyst 7.10. I'd love a solution too.

[K!llum!nat!]

this is why my next graphic card will be a nvidia... **** ati, theyre messing
around with their drivers and my x1600pro is kinda ****ed up with drivers from 06.

[l-_-l]

Some mobility Radeon chips are manufacturer specific, and ATI's detection utility will not find them. Instead you need to downloaded the latest drivers from your laptop's manufacturer's website. If they don't go about 7.8 you may be in a hole. Maybe some third-party drivers will help but don't quote me on it.

By the way, I have the same crashing issue with my Mobility 9700/9600 and I'm running Catalyst 7.10. I'd love a solution too.

I was thinking about trying dna-ati.... ill let you know how it goes if i get there

i have the same card as you.... can you download the 7.8 drivers?

[rickatnight11]

I was thinking about trying dna-ati.... ill let you know how it goes if i get there

i have the same card as you.... can you download the 7.8 drivers?

I just got back from work and I'm going to do some testing to see if I can eliminate these freezes. First I'm going to try the tweak in UTEngine.ini by changing DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks to false. Stay posted for results. If this doesn't help then I'll try the 7.8 drivers, and then the 7.9 drivers.

Specs
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
1 GB Ram
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with Catalyst 7.10

[rickatnight11]

Well that didn't work. Within 1 minute of starting a Deathmatch in Shangri La the game froze requiring a restart. I'm going to try to find 7.8 drivers to test out.

[rickatnight11]

Well, I couldn't find the 7.8 or 7.9 catalyst for mobility chips which I suspect is the issue you ran into, l-_-l, I think you found the regular catalyst drivers and not the one specified for mobility cards. Anywho, I'm going to use the latest Omega Drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/win2k_xp.php which are based off of Catalyst 7.9.1. I'll keep you posted.

[rickatnight11]

As far as I can tell the Omega drivers fixed the issue. I don't know if this is because it is Catalyst 7.9 or from some tweak in these drivers but the game has not locked up yet and is running noticeably faster. Finally I can find out how high the graphics can go. I implore others to test different drivers, and if anyone has access to the original 7.9 Mobility Catalyst drivers please test them out and post your findings.

[rickatnight11]

Well it took a while but after about 15 minutes of play I did run into a freeze which did resume play after a minute but was followed by another freeze. I guess these drivers aren't immune after all, but they did seem to decrease the effect.

[Pariahman]

If you are still having problems running the game please run through this post and submit your system specs/logs and we will try to help you out.

http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost...65&postcount=1

Thanks!

[Mark Rein]

i tried running catalyst 7.9 & 7.10 because 7.8 doesn't work... it says it can't find any hardware on my pc that the drivers are compatable with.

Unfortunately for laptops you have to get the drivers from your manufacturer. This is the secret curse of gaming on laptops - the manufacturers won't let ATI and NVIDIA support the laptops with their normal driver releases. I've heard a ton of different excuses for this but they'll nonsense and just come down to the big computer manufacturers wanting control over what drivers you put on your laptop. The sad part is that they seldom make the effort to keep the drivers updated. They could authorize ATI and NVIDIA to support them publicly but they won't. Laptop gamers are SCREWED because of this and Epic has been fighting this behind the scenes for several years now with little success. ATI and NVIDIA say their hands are tied on this but I think they need to stand up to their hardware partners in the interest of the end user experience. It is making them look bad too. You bought a laptop that you thought could play the game well (and it could play games well back when you bought it because the drivers were relatively up to date when it shipped) but now you can't play current games simply because your driver is out of date.

The bottom line is that gamers need to speak out (SCREAM ACTUALLY) about this injustice because more and more PC users are moving to laptops and they'll be having horrible gaming experiences (even when the laptops do have decent graphics chips totally capable of playing the games) if the drivers aren't kept up to date. I have a DELL M170 at home and the latest drivers for it are over a year old with no sign that they'll ever release updated drivers. NVIDIA could simply at that machine to the .INF file they release with the reference drivers and it would work like a charm but they can't because DELL won't let them.

Speak out folks, speak out loudly! Tell your hardware companies this kind of behaviour is anti-gaming and you'll go to other vendors in the future if they don't change it.

Having said that there are one or two of the high-end laptop makers who let NVIDIA (not sure about ATI but probably them as well) support the mobile chips in their machines. You'd have to check the graphics chip manufacturer's driver download sites for more details.

[rickatnight11]

My laptop comes from iBuyPower.com, originally manufactured by Uniwill, and so far this is the first time a graphics issue has manifested. I know what you mean about specialized mobility drivers for nVidia and ATI. My friend has an HP with an nVidia chip in it, and it ticked me off that none of the drivers from nVidia's site worked, and HP refused to update their old faulty driver. My laptop, however, has always worked with ATI's drivers and seems to have a fairly generic motherboard setup in general. I hope this helps and I will definitely post my setup in the thread you provided.

[l-_-l]

well i guess its come down to try using this

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/

thank you for the answer Mark!

i will update when i get it installed.... later today probably and then see how it works!

[l-_-l]

If you are still having problems running the game please run through this post and submit your system specs/logs and we will try to help you out.

http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost...65&postcount=1

Thanks!

I did post there btw... post # 516