x1400 and drivers

Ok so these are my thoughts.

The Omega drivers look good but i am reluctant because I have heard that there are a lot of bugs that could come up.

ATI Drivers not sure if those support Dell Laptops

The Dell Drivers aren't very good and underclocked.

What do all of you guys think?

 

anyone thinking about this?

 

I personally believe the performance gained by the Omega drivers are negligible when it comes to X1400. If your itching for an extra frame per second, go for it, but the X1400 is still going to be the X1400. But I could be wrong, but other than cutting image quality, I don't really see what they could be doing that ATI hasn't already done.

 

overclock hehehe

 

always install omegas, as they're the most up to date.
dell usually doesn't update drivers too often

 

I installed the omega drivers in my e1505 yesterday... so far I really like them... the driver interface is cleaner... and I got an immediate bump (without overclocking) from 1775 to 1876 in 3dmark 2005. Its noticably faster in some parts of 3dmark.

Also, and this is minor... but the catalyst driver control panel didnt display text correctly on my 1680x1050 screen due to font size issues... but the omega driver did fine.

 

do i have to uninstall old drivers before i install the new ones?

 

Yes, you have to go to control panel and uninstall the older drivers.

<off/topic> how does the x1400 perfrom genrally anyways? do you use it to play games?
thanks

 

it doesn't have the same look in the options, and recognized the card as the M56 (or 53) weird (yes i know, it's the model n#)

 

Hey! Do you think once you get the omega drivers or even now could you take a screnshot of a "pretty" high end game (if you have one) running on your X1400 equiped notebook?

I'm thinking of buying an E1705 so I need to truly know how well it performs in games with the X1400. Thanks alot!

 

A screen shots not going to tell you much... maybe how pretty it looks... but not anything about playablity (ie framerate). What games are you wanting to play?

The x1400 will play most games at med/high settings... Ive ran the demos of a few to see how they do... Doom was playable at 1280x800 with most settings on medium. BF2 played very well at 1280x800 with most settings at medium, 2x aa, and dynamic shadows enabled. Its not a bad card... although those with 7800 nvidias and the like will tell you that you shouldnt even bother to game on anything less.

 

I realy would like to play stuff like Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Oblivion and other pretty intensive games.I'd prefer an X1600 of course but I can't seem to find a notebook with one for under $1300...

 

I had the same problem... wanted x1600 or nvidia 7800 or better graphics... but their just not available in a sub $1500 package. Believe me, I looked! They were for a short time in the dell e1705 but they pulled it... Im guessing partly due to heat, and partly as to not draw sales away from their XPS models.

From what I understand the x1400 will play Half-Life 2 but I havent tried it yet... its typically less performance hungry than Doom3 and ive played that successfully on my x1400 e1505. Ive talked to 2-3 people that are playing oblivion on their e1505s now... just not at max settings... some turn down the resolution others turn down the draw distance and grass... in truth I dont think theres many cards out there at all that can run Oblivion without turning down something though.

Bottom line... If you want x1600 or better gaming performance your going to either spend $1500+ for your notebook, or buy an older non core-duo notebook. When I came to that conclusion, ordering my e1505 was alot easier... I wasnt willing to give up core-duo or the large screen, so the e1505 was the only logical choice in my price range.

 

Does anyone know how to put games in windows.
Also I was wondering if anyone knows how to put black bars on the sides of games so they don't get streached

 

Not sure what you mean by putting games in windows... but what you need to do to keep things from stretching is change a setting in you graphics driver.

By default its set to 'resize graphics to fit the screen' You need to change it to either 'Resize Graphics but maintain aspect ratio' or 'Do not resize graphics to fit the screen'

Id recommend resize graphics but maintain aspect ratio... it seems to be the best setting for most things. IMO.

 

Haven't played a whole lot, and still haven't loaded omega drivers (iam lazy)... But have been playing Blazing Angels and Tomb Raider Legends (demos) on my puter and they run and look great... ill have to look at what settings iam playing them at -can't remember off the top of my head.

 

Oblivion can play on the x1400 with medium settings with lowest wide-screen option. But once anti-aliasing turns on, it becomes lag galore