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ATi officially offering Mobile Catalyst Drivers....notebook vendors byebye drivers

post #1 of 15
4/10/05 at 6:13am
Thread Starter 
"ATi is finally bringing some relief to long suffering notebook users. The Catalyst driver qualification has long been the domain of the notebook vendors, and if the current ones are any indication, they mostly are doing a miserable job. The drivers are slow to be released, if they come at all, and are woefully behind the state of the desktop Catalysts. Not a good situation if you are a gamer with a lugable notebook and a Powered by ATI sticker.

ATI is about to change that a bit with the release of a new line of mobile catalyst drivers. Almost a week ago, they put out a beta, with regular updates promised to follow. Yay, about #*&^@ time. The official way of putting it is 'The Goal: To provide regular mobile driver updates for our customers', and it is targeted at the mobile enthusiast. They are going to target XP only (boo), M1x, M2x and future products only (hiss), and will be updated regularly (yay).

The only thing that worries me is that they have an exclusion list based on SSVendorID. The phrase exclusion list worries me, but as a whole, I think this mobile catalyst driver is a very very good thing. Congrats to ATI for finally taking this step. ยต"

Personally, I like the Omegas, but in either case, it's long overdue.

source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22427
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post #2 of 15
4/10/05 at 6:29am
Thread Starter 
I wonder how they will compare in performance to the Omega's, though.

Especially since the Omegas are based on the official Catalyst drivers anyway......
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post #3 of 15
4/10/05 at 2:48pm
About time! This is good and as far as Omega is concern. I'm sure they will continue to release optimised driver for gaming.
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post #4 of 15
4/10/05 at 3:35pm
Do they have a damn fix for the ati2dvag display driver error? That driver error totally owned my laptop.
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post #5 of 15
4/10/05 at 10:38pm
I don't get it, how are these different from the normal catalyst drivers with the INF hack?

People have been installing plain vanilla catalyst drivers on their notebooks for years. The exact same software as the desktop. The desktop catalysts work fine on notebooks and even have notebook-oriented options that are only visible on notebooks.

So what's with the seperate drivers for notebooks?
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post #6 of 15
4/11/05 at 6:10am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guspaz
I don't get it, how are these different from the normal catalyst drivers with the INF hack?

People have been installing plain vanilla catalyst drivers on their notebooks for years. The exact same software as the desktop. The desktop catalysts work fine on notebooks and even have notebook-oriented options that are only visible on notebooks.

So what's with the seperate drivers for notebooks?
Besides being "official"?

We'll just have to wait and find out, won't we?
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post #7 of 15
4/11/05 at 8:20am
hasnt ATi's software department always been a little slow??
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post #8 of 15
4/11/05 at 8:35am
Well, considering 99% of notebook users (the people on this forum are not a normal subset of people who use notebooks) probably only think they can use the drivers from their manufacturer, this is a good thing.
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post #9 of 15
4/14/05 at 8:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by garygchouvln
hasnt ATi's software department always been a little slow??
No, the opposite. They put out 12 driver releases per year, which I do believe is more than nVidia.

And unlike nVidia, ATI actually tells you what is new for the drivers by giving you the changelog. nVidia just announces a new driver rev and releases no info on what changed.
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post #10 of 15
4/14/05 at 9:08pm
Thread Starter 
Good points. ATi really has better driver support than nVidia.
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post #11 of 15
5/3/05 at 1:31pm
Any news on when these will be released?
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post #12 of 15
5/3/05 at 3:01pm
Maybe someone should call ati? :-)
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post #13 of 15
5/3/05 at 3:07pm
nVidia offers better support. Ati doesn't support linux for example, or at least as well as nVidia does.
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post #14 of 15
5/3/05 at 3:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karma
Good points. ATi really has better driver support than nVidia.
Not form my experiences.
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post #15 of 15
5/3/05 at 4:26pm
Uh oh. Someone tell me this isn't going to be the old 'ati drivers vs nvidia drivers' rap.

I've heard the stories about ati's drivers in the past, and I agree that they're a little sketchy. BUT, after being a long time user of my desktop 8500, I can say that they have improved immensely!

I too am wondering how these drivers will differ from the omegas. I suppose that, at the very least, the 'official' drivers will be better received by the masses.

Now ati, give us some linux support.
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