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    Questions about T500 and Radeon 3650 card

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by tlyczko, Jan 6, 2009.

  1. tlyczko

    tlyczko Newbie

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    I have a new T500 with an ATI Radeon 3650 discrete graphics card (PCI Express I believe and 256 MB dedicated RAM).

    Installed the latest drivers I could get via MS updates, also ran the ATI drivers installer.

    Presently have the BIOS set to 'discrete' graphics card and not using the switchable graphics option.

    1. Why is it that when I look at this card's properties via Display Settings / Advanced Settings...it says that 1757 MB of Shared System Memory is being used?? I don't want the card to be taking up system RAM, I need it for my apps!!

    How can I fix things so the graphics card is not using any 'shared' RAM??

    2. Can anyone suggest why I cannot get the ATI Catalyst Control Center to install or appear despite running the ATI installer?? I would like to see if it does anything better for multi-monitor display than Vista itself.

    Running Vista Business x64 with a ViewSonic VX2025w-Series monitor, using XP drivers, all that I could find for the monitor.

    Thank you, Tom
     
    tlyczko, Jan 6, 2009
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  2. marlin29311

    marlin29311 Notebook Enthusiast

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    The gfx card isn't really using all that memory - it's more of a "glitch" that the system thinks it can use the system RAM as well as the RAM on the GFX.

    Not really sure why you're control center isn't appearing - I've done the same thing (disable the switchable GFW - i wanted to boot to DVI, so i had to do this) and I have the ATI icon in my system tray...
     
    marlin29311, Jan 7, 2009
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  3. lenardg

    lenardg Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    Which ATI installer did you run? The one that comes with the notebook / downloaded from Lenovo site? That should have given you the control panel.

    If you downloaded a driver package from ATI it will not work, because ATI does not release Mobility Catalyst drivers for Windows Vista directly and the desktop version will not work out of the box. You can run the installer but it will not install anything. --> If you used Mobility Modder to make the desktop drivers into mobility drivers that is a problem with 64 bit Vista (at least I ran into it): because mobility modder modifies the digital signature, 64 bit Vista does not like the package after that. I think it is best to use the package from Lenovo and simply disable switchability in BIOS.
     
    lenardg, Jan 8, 2009
    #3