E1505: Updating to Catalyst 7.3 a Problem?

Hi,

I have an Inspiron E1505 running Windows Vista Ultimate. It is equipped with an ATI X1400 GPU.

Ive been running the Catalyst 7.2 drivers succesfully on this setup since the drivers were released, and yesterday I downloaded the 7.3 drivers from the ATI site so that I could update them.

First of all I uninstalled the 7.2 drivers and then ran the 7.3 installer. The installer told me that there were no components to upgrade.

I then tried to make sure that the 7.3 drivers were uninstalled and that there were no ati drivers installed for the gpu and retried. Again no luck. No components to upgrade.

I then reinstalled the 7.2 drivers. The 7.2 installer installed the 7.2 drivers and the CCC without any problems.

Finally I tried to upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3, but the 7.3 installer told me that I have the latest components to install (incidentally the 7.2 version).

I know that in the past it was a hassle getting the official Catalysts to install on Dell laptops, Im wondering is this a bug in the 7.3 installer, or has ATI/Dell wised up and now from 7.3 onwards you wont be able to install Official ATI Drivers?

Has anyone had any luck installing the Catalyst 7.3 drivers on their E1505? If so could you tell me how?

Thanks in Advance,

Mark

 

The x1400 is not listed for Catalyst 7.3 with Vista drivers. Many others have complained...but the x1400 is NOT in the installation notes, nor the installer file. You could try to mod the file with this

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

Bob

 

What Bobmitch said ^^. You are trying to install unsupported software. If you go through ATI's driver selection tool - http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html - and plug in your configuration (Windows Vista 32, Mobility Radeon, X1400) it comes back with 7.2 as the latest version.

 

I have a related question. Is there any reason to stay with the Dell drivers for these ATI cards? For non-gamers, is there any benefit to going over to the ATI version?

Thanks guys

 

Not sure there is a single good answer to that. Conventional logic would say that if you aren't experiencing problems then there is no need to upgrade, but if you are a Vista user then I think it's a different story at the moment.

The Vista drivers are so new, and in many cases were rushed out that they really are awful, so you will see dramatic performance improvements, better stability etc with the new drivers. I know that Catalyst 7.2 had a 20+% increase in Open GL performance.

Of course these performance improvements are going to be most noticeable when the card is working hard and gaming is one obvious cause of that, but presumably you bought a separate GPU for a reason so anything that is going to load it will see a benefit.

For now, I will be looking to update drivers fairly consistently, 6 months from now, it may be a different story.

 

Thanks, I am a Vista user so you are confirming what I thought.

 

Catalyst 7.1 were really the first release for Vista. They were OK. Some artifacting, but performance was decent. 7.2's fixed Open GL...but direct 3d was a mess. The 7.3's seem smoother...but have issues as well with monitor polling and BSOD on bootup (mainly a desktop issue). If you are satisfied with the performance and quality with 7.2...stick with it and keep an eye open for later releases. ATI and Nvidia have done horrible jobs with drivers for Vista.

 

I have the same notebook, and have tried everyhting to get the 7.3 Catalyst...at one point ATI even had the 7.3 Catalyst for Vista / & the x1400 mobility radeon...now its not even on their site?? If you find a way PLEASE let me know! I am trying to download and open second life and cannot because of some issue. I have currently the 7.2 version but the Second Life folks say I need 7.3 Catalyst, but I cant get it anywhere!

 

7.3 and vista are currently broken. Its a known issue, they dont know the cause yet, only that many users have been getting blue screens with them. Stick with 7.2