W7 and old video cards

I've noticed that W7 works extremely well on some older computers... P4 with 512-1024MB RAM machines, that sort of calibre. It's as fast or faster than XP, offers plenty of additions, eye candy, etc. Even with old video cards (something along the lines of a GF MX440-class card) it's plenty fast.

However, I've also noticed that W7 doesn't really seem to support these cards anymore, even for non-3D non-Aero type purposes. Normally this would be fine, however the default VGA display driver pretty much only goes to 1600x1200 resolution and does not do a good job of supporting some of the other resolutions (aka 16:10 such as 1680x1050) that have emerged in the last several years.

Is there any way to get the default VGA driver in W7 to understand some of the non-4:3 resolutions and use them? I've not been able to find a way. In Vista I somehow have been able to do this (I have a P4 with a MX420 running Vista in 1680x1050 using some nVidia driver I apparently found somewhere along the way) but in W7, no such luck. It seems to me I'd still have some shot at doing this since the two OSs are supposed to be driver compatible, and W7 certainly breathes life into an old PC in a way a MS operating system has not done before.

 

I had a similar problem putting W7 on a 7 year old Inspiron 8200 with a UXGA screen and a Geforce2 Go card. The best resolution I could get was 1024 x 768 using the generic driver.

The nVidia alternatives wouldn't work so after some faffing around I installed the XP driver from Dell's website and that gives me 1600 x 1200. I haven't tested it thoroughly but everything seems to work fine.

It was, of course, the same driver I was using for XP, so maybe whatever you were using for XP would work in your case?

 

I have a similar issue with the ATI 9000 in my old A75, by extracting the XP driver and using that I was able to get 1280x800 to work (best before that was generic with 1024x768) but obviously it wouldnt do Aero or anything.

 

Nankuru, how much RAM is onboard your Geforce2 Go card? 32MB right? How is it performing?

 

I found a good driver here that works on my old Toshiba P35-S609 with ATI 9000/9001. I get the full native resolution of 1440x900
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php
Run in compatability mode

 

Yup, 32. Performance is OK. Obviously, there's no Aero and Media Center requires 64MB, but the basic day to day stuff works well. It isn't quite as snappy as a newer machine. Subjectively, it seems very similar to XP in performance.

The only day to day limitation, which also appies to XP is full (1600 x 1200) screen video playback depending on source. HQ streaming through the iPlayer is a little jerky but watchable though not as good as watching it at the normal size.

 

Thanks.

Last night, I installed Win7 32 bit on my 2002 Inspiron 8200 (2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 64MB nVidia) and it runs impressively well. A seven (7!) year old laptop that can run the latest Microsoft OS. That's great

 

install the driver in xp capability mode. Ill test windows 7 on a p4 desktop later i have in my basement

 

Any idea what the reason is behind the standard driver not supporting wide screen resolutions these days? I have a feeling it has something to do with the generic driver only supporting standard 4:3 VESA resolutions? Did any of the widescreen 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions become VESA standards?