Want to install X1600 driver for my V5200. Please help!

Hey all, This is my first post, and I've had only a week of exposure with 64-bit of any kind. Vista x64 works incredibly well! WOW! My exact hardware specs are in my sig.

Anyway, one thing bugs me that just cannot seem to find the answer to. I have the ATI FireGL V5200, which is "based on" the X1600 ATI Radeon. Is it possible for me to install a driver for just the X1600? The X1600's benchmark score in most cases is DOUBLE of what the V5200 generates. I think I would benefit from using my V5200 "as the X1600" for 3D, video playback, and gaming. This is according to a few articles I've read.

So...do I need a special BIOS version? I looked on ATI's site, and while I can find the drivers, and all kinds of software for the V5200, they do not have anything for the X1600. Instead, ATI points to "your laptop manufacturer's site for support", which I thought was odd!?? I couldn't really find anything there. I use Vista Ultimate 64-bit, by the way.

I'd love to see if there is a difference, which I've been told there is, but with this driver issue, I'm at a loss.

Thanks all!! This board looks awesome!!

Hmm...I went through and got this as the driver set: AMD GAME! Drivers and Utilities

I did that starting here: Drivers & Software and selecting Vista x64, Radeon, X1600.

But, that said, I'm not sure it'll work. You may be stuck with the FireGL drivers: ATI FireGL™ Unified Driver Version 8.44 for Windows Vista (64 bit)

While the V5200 is based on the X1600, you may not be able to do the same things. For example in the world of aircraft, an RC-135 is based on the Boeing 707. Unfortunately, you can't put a 180 people in an RC-135, because they changed what it was designed to do. So, if you take a FireGL (which is designed for graphic design), you may not be able to do the gaming that the X1600 was designed to do.

Isn't the X1600 a built in GFX card? For Laptops? Then they would redirect you to the manufacturer's site.

And also it means that ATI doesn't support that GFX anymore. So they hand you off.

Right...ATI(AMD) does not support them. I installed the latest CCC (8.2, released this month), and it always goes to "Detecting video graphics", etc. and "finds" my graphics card to be the FireGL V5200. Nothing wrong with that, but I know I read in a forum that I can install the driver for the X1600, so that I'll benefit from the 3D, enhanced video playback, gaming, etc., as opposed to what the FireGL V5200's strong suits are, which are AutoCAD, and other graphics-intensive "Professional-termed" applications, which I don't use.

So again, maybe I have to go without the CCC, which would be fine with me, although it's great as to how you can configure everything to death.

That said, for what I use my laptop (Thinkpad) for, I'd be much better off with the X1600 driver, which again, I've read both in an article, as well as a forum member said, if my memory serves me correctly, is supposedly a breeze to accomplish.

What can I do?

Are you sure its a Vista driver? Because that does screw up somethings.

I have tried numerous time to install that package, both on my x86 version, and now on my x64 installation. Please view the two photos to see that the driver is still shown as 8.383.1.1000, dated 6/21/07 (first pic, titled "ATI_driver" see below), and on the Device Driver details page (second pic, titled "ATI_details" below), it displays a lot os "unknown"'s as far as the provider, file version, and copyright go, and it is not a signed driver, by ATI it appears.

What am I doing wrong. Every time I tried to get the driver up to 8.44, which is the latest (no?), the Catalyst Control Center says that everything is "up to date". But something is definitely not right here. So point of fact is that while I want the X1600 driver to work, at least in part (ideally), I don't even have the latest FireGL in place!? What am I missing here? What do you recommend that I do next?

Thanks so much for helping me with this!


Oh yea, Not only Vista, but x64.

Okay, let's try the FireGL first. Download that one and have it standing by. Uninstall the current driver (use the button in picture one). Typically, you'd then restart and it would install a generic driver. At this point, you could install the newer FireGL driver. If that doesn't work (or if it installs the old FireGL driver which doesn't seem to want to update), you could try uninstalling and install the new driver without restarting.

Sometimes you have to try to confuse your computer (or, rather, confuse yourself) just enough to do what you want.

This does seem to be true in this case, and I agree, sometimes you do have to do that, and I am speaking from personal experience.

At any rate, after I had posted my previous message, I tried exactly that. Without restarting but once, I uninstalled the driver, as well as the entire CCC. Then, when it was on a 2006 driver in VGA mode (weird wild stuff, my man... ), I tried to install two versions of the Radeon driver, and quickly found out, which matched your assertion that this baby cannot be run in X1600-mode exclusively. I should hardly complain, as when I fired up a game recently, not only did it work, it went into "64-bit mode". I thought what the...Apparently, it "acts as an X1600" when prompted to do so. Would that be fair to say?

Anyway, I suppose I've given up on the X1600-only issue. However, I have never been able to install a newer driver than the one from 6/21/07. Not on my x86 Thinkpad, not on this one, when it was still running the x86 version of Vista, nor now, in its x64 days. Not ever. Not at all.

So this Catalyst Control Center is great and everything...but it may be the culprit in preventing me, at least to some extent, from installing the latest V5200 driver, which has been 8.44 for some time, if I'm not mistaken!? I'll give you one example, which ought to be quite "telling". When I had the CCC installed only, along with a generic driver. I attempted to, for the 27th time probably, to install the driver from 12/20/07, which is on ATI's site even, and it came back with "All components are up to date"...???

To make the long story even longer, I saw the ATI chip on my motherboard, and I want to say that it said X1600. I'm not sure at all, though. I can go back in and take a look, but let's see if the V5200 driver can be installed at all...lol.

Thanks again for all your input and help! More kudos to you!

I wonder...

I've never heard of it happening, but let's try this thought experiment:

1) You are ATI. You release a driver in June, but don't know how well it will work with a 64-bit OS. People download it and run it.
2) In December, you say "Okay, people are reporting success with that. Post it as a driver, and we'll sign it for x64." No one updates the file version numbers internally, so everyone reads it as the same driver (which it really is).

or

1) People download the driver and something goes wonky with installation or the download. Large-scale failures with that. People are told to try reinstalling, but have no success.
2) You fix the installer and continue with the advice "Re-install", but faith in the driver has been lost. Most people have rolled back to a previous driver and complain that no new one works.
3) You re-release the same driver, but change the name on it, to convince people to actually install it now that it works. People install. Most never look to see the version and don't care. Some wonder why they can't update, but find that everything is running okay anyway.

I doubt they'd do that, but one of those seems like it might explain what happened there.

Here is some more detailed info on my ATI card and its drivers. I've marked a few items that looked questionable to me...It's not even signed by ATI, for example. What do you guys think? Hmm...

Thanks everyone!