2600xt?

[flopticalcube]

Okay, I did some poking around and found this from ATI.

The desktop drivers will work if your force them. Or you could use Mobility Modder to make the desktop drivers look like mobility drivers. I use the the 7.12 Catalyst drivers via Mobility Modder. Its a bit of farting around but it works. The 7.12 drivers really improved things under XP dramatically as did the latest Apple Leopard Graphics Update for OSX.

One thing of note to those who muse about swapping MXM cards around. The iMac uses an integrated CPU/GPU heatsink that is built just for the iMacs graphics cards so if you did swap another one in there, that would be something else you would have to deal with (amongst a host of other issues).

With the latest drivers, the HD2600 has improved considerably in my estimation. Its no graphics ho, but it does its job a lot better than it did a few months ago.

 

[DoFoT9]

The desktop drivers will work if your force them. Or you could use Mobility Modder to make the desktop drivers look like mobility drivers. I use the the 7.12 Catalyst drivers via Mobility Modder. Its a bit of farting around but it works. The 7.12 drivers really improved things under XP dramatically as did the latest Apple Leopard Graphics Update for OSX.

One thing of note to those who muse about swapping MXM cards around. The iMac uses an integrated CPU/GPU heatsink that is built just for the iMacs graphics cards so if you did swap another one in there, that would be something else you would have to deal with (amongst a host of other issues).

With the latest drivers, the HD2600 has improved considerably in my estimation. Its no graphics ho, but it does its job a lot better than it did a few months ago.

oh so your saying lego star wars II will run much faster with 10.5.2 ??

 

[flopticalcube]

oh so your saying lego star wars II will run much faster with 10.5.2 ??

LOL! Don't know about LSWII but WoW does seem to run a lot faster but that may be down to the improvements in OpenGL.

 

[DoFoT9]

LOL! Don't know about LSWII but WoW does seem to run a lot faster but that may be down to the improvements in OpenGL.

oh dang lol... my mbp sometimes (often) lags on LSWII hahahaha.

u got my hopes up

 

[autumn]

So I finally installed xp pro on my iMac for gaming. I updated the driver from 10.5 disk and now my driver is 8.390.0.0 dated 6/14/2007.

What's the newest driver number for 2600xt under XP?

What's the best way to upgrade the driver in XP? Would I see a sizable improvement over my current driver?

What's the opinion on overclocking 2600xt? I've read many pages here and seems people have mixed opinions about it.

Thanks!

 

[flopticalcube]

So I finally installed xp pro on my iMac for gaming. I updated the driver from 10.5 disk and now my driver is 8.390.0.0 dated 6/14/2007.

What's the newest driver number for 2600xt under XP?

Catalyst 8.2 (Feb 2008) from ATI's site.

What's the best way to upgrade the driver in XP

Use Mobility Modder (google it) to convert the desktop driver to laptop ones.

Would I see a sizable improvement over my current driver?

Yes.

What's the opinion on overclocking 2600xt? I've read many pages here and seems people have mixed opinions about it.

Not worth it, IMO, especially with the new drivers.

 

[autumn]

Catalyst 8.2 (Feb 2008) from ATI's site.


Use Mobility Modder (google it) to convert the desktop driver to laptop ones.


Yes.


Not worth it, IMO, especially with the new drivers.

I followed the instruction on the Mobility Modder's website. Afterwards, my driver number stayed the same and I don't think there is any improvement on the game. I must have done something wrong.

Could you or anyone give any pointers?

By the way, Catalyst 8.2 doesn't work on my computer, it said "couldn't find the hardware" or something like that. I don't think it recognized the 2600xt on the iMac.

Does the driver number change under device manager after you upgrade the driver?

Thanks for any help! I haven't used Windows for years.

 

[flopticalcube]

My driver version is 8.442.0.0 dated sometime in December (I prefer the Catalyst 7.12 as I don't see any diff with the 8 series). Maybe you need to clean out your old drivers first with Driver Cleaner. You don't actually go all the way to installing the drivers as Catalyst doesn't recognize laptop setups (although the software works just fine). That's why we need Mobility Modder. Just let the driver installation load the files on your drive and then quit before it actually tries to install the drivers. Then run MM on the install directory. Then run the update driver button from the driver control panel and choose "Have disk..." and point it to the newly modified directory. It should pick up the inf file and show you a list with Mobility Radeon HD2600 XT on it.

 

[autumn]

My driver version is 8.442.0.0 dated sometime in December (I prefer the Catalyst 7.12 as I don't see any diff with the 8 series). Maybe you need to clean out your old drivers first with Driver Cleaner. You don't actually go all the way to installing the drivers as Catalyst doesn't recognize laptop setups (although the software works just fine). That's why we need Mobility Modder. Just let the driver installation load the files on your drive and then quit before it actually tries to install the drivers. Then run MM on the install directory. Then run the update driver button from the driver control panel and choose "Have disk..." and point it to the newly modified directory. It should pick up the inf file and show you a list with Mobility Radeon HD2600 XT on it.

The things is the last step, I don't see the mobility redeon hd2600 xt file on my computer. I extracted the files from Catalyst but didn't installed it like you said.

Anything I'm not doing right?

 

[flopticalcube]

The things is the last step, I don't see the mobility redeon hd2600 xt file on my computer. I extracted the files from Catalyst but didn't installed it like you said.

Anything I'm not doing right?

Once you have extract and modded, update the driver but at all the steps that say "find the driver" always choose the manual route. Never let XP find the appropriate driver as you already have one and only you know where it is. Eventually you get to the window that says "Choose from list" or something like that. At the bottom is a button that says "Have disk..." click on that and then click on the browse button and point it to the newly modified driver file. Its in /ATI/Support/7.12..../driver/driver/XP_INF somewhere down there. Its an inf file, CX_88511.inf (well mine was), I think. Once you choose that file, windows will complain that the driver is not signed and some bollox like that. Just continue anyways. Windows makes you earn your driver updates.

 

[autumn]

Once you have extract and modded, update the driver but at all the steps that say "find the driver" always choose the manual route. Never let XP find the appropriate driver as you already have one and only you know where it is. Eventually you get to the window that says "Choose from list" or something like that. At the bottom is a button that says "Have disk..." click on that and then click on the browse button and point it to the newly modified driver file. Its in /ATI/Support/7.12..../driver/driver/XP_INF somewhere down there. Its an inf file, CX_88511.inf (well mine was), I think. Once you choose that file, windows will complain that the driver is not signed and some bollox like that. Just continue anyways. Windows makes you earn your driver updates.

In my XP_INF folder, there is no file with .inf extention. I'm wondering whether I should try 7.12.

P.S. I might not be doing the modding right also. When I trying to mod the file, under XP_INF/B_58538/ which file should I mod. From the modder window after I chose B_58538...there is nothing else to select. No file shows up.

 

[flopticalcube]

In my XP_INF folder, there is no file with .inf extention. I'm wondering whether I should try 7.12.

Should be in there. I didn't see any improvement with 8.1 or 8.2 so I am sticking with 7.12. 8.3 might have some improvements. I understand AA has improved but since I rarely turn it on, I'm still not sure I'll bother. Most of the stuff coming out now appears to be for the HD3xx0 series of cards, particularly for xFire, so its of little use to us.

You just have to modify the main 7.12 (or 8.2) directory. MM knows where to go.

 

[autumn]

I tried again. This time only downloaded display drivers only from ATI. Extracted them. But...before AND after I modded the folder C:/ATI/support/8-2_XP32_dd_58128/driver/driver/xp_inf/B_58528....there is no, notta a file name Mobility Radeon HD 2600xt.

Can someone confirm it's not a problem with Catalyst 8.2?

I'm very fustrated and don't know what else to do.

 

[flopticalcube]

Here is the contents of the XP_INF directory under 8.2. As you can see the file is called CX_59344.inf

I can also confirm that there is an entry for the 2600 XT in that file.

 

[nigrunze]

C:/ATI/support/8-2_XP32_dd_58128/driver/driver/xp_inf/B_58528....there is no, notta a file name Mobility Radeon HD 2600xt.

You're right about the part of there not being a Mobility Radeon HD 2600xt entry, but there is an ATI Radeon HD 2600XT entry. You can probably use that. I'm not using Mobility Modder, so I don't know the exact steps.

 

[Tesseract]

It would probably be a better idea to select the HD 2600 instead of the 2600XT if you do not use Mobility Modder, since the HD 2600 specs are much closer to the Mobility 2600XT than they are to the desktop 2600XT.

Also, I have noticed no performance difference between using the default ATI Radeon HD 2600 drivers and the Mobility Modder 2600XT drivers, so I'm not sure its worth the effort to install using Mobility Modder... but I could very well be wrong.

In any case, to repeat it again in case somebody missed it:

THE DEFAULT ATI CATALYST DRIVERS DO NOT CONTAIN THE MOBILITY RADEON HD 2600XT.

If you're having problems installing the drivers, the full instructions are repeated several times some pages back in this very thread.

 

[autumn]

Here is the contents of the XP_INF directory under 8.2. As you can see the file is called CX_59344.inf

I can also confirm that there is an entry for the 2600 XT in that file.

I have the exact same files as you. But my CX_59344 doesn't have inf. extention after it. Just plain CX_59344.

Is that right?

 

[autumn]

Never mind. I just tried to select the file CX_59344 anyway and it went through.

Now my driver version is 8.453.0.0 dated 1/22/2008

Gonna go do some gaming to see if there is any noticable difference.

Thanks flopticalcube and everyone!

 

[autumn]

I have a 2.8 C2E iMac. I just upgrade the latest XP drivers from ATI (Catalyst 8.2) under bootcamp.

Now playing Half-life 2 with everything maxed out 1600x1200, I get anywhere between 80-160ish FPS. I've got nothing to complain about. It's really smooth now unlike before I get every once a while a little jerk for a split of a sec.

Overall, I think it is a 20-30FPS improment. Very happy!

 

[flopticalcube]

I have a 2.8 C2E iMac. I just upgrade the latest XP drivers from ATI (Catalyst 8.2) under bootcamp.

Now playing Half-life 2 with everything maxed out 1600x1200, I get anywhere between 80-160ish FPS. I've got nothing to complain about. It's really smooth now unlike before I get every once a while a little jerk for a split of a sec.

Overall, I think it is a 20-30FPS improment. Very happy!

Glad to see you did it. Now the 8.3 drivers should be out in a couple of weeks so you get to do it all over again.

 

[flopticalcube]

You're right about the part of there not being a Mobility Radeon HD 2600xt entry, but there is an ATI Radeon HD 2600XT entry. You can probably use that. I'm not using Mobility Modder, so I don't know the exact steps.

To be honest, I think that's all Mobility Modder does: changes the entry to Mobility so that you don't have to choose from a huge list and get warning windows.

 

[autumn]

Glad to see you did it. Now the 8.3 drivers should be out in a couple of weeks so you get to do it all over again.

Each verison will have new drivers to 2600xt?

That's sweet!! I can finally make the best of my iMac video card.

What do you keep track when do ATI release a new version without going to the their site everytime?

 

[flopticalcube]

Each verison will have new drivers to 2600xt?

That's sweet!! I can finally make the best of my iMac video card.

What do you keep track when do ATI release a new version without going to the their site everytime?

Its usually announced on guru3d.

 

[Tesseract]

Its usually announced on guru3d.

ATI also has an RSS feed dedicated solely for Catalyst driver updates. The feed only mentions Vista (at least thats what it says on mine - I have Vista anyways), but the XP updates are there too.

feed://www2.ati.com/rss/catalyst.rss

 

[stuepfnick]

Bootcamp ATI-Drivers

The easiest thing is to simply donwload the ATI-Drivers (+Catalyst Control Center) for Bootcamp/Windows XP. It is Version (I think) v 7.12 of the CCC.

And it is an ATI HD2600XT mobility, no HD2600Pro Desktop with GDDR3-RAM (as Apple says). So just download the official new driver and performance is pretty good, not so bad as in OS X, there I did not notice anything to get better since 10.4.10 (now 10.5.2 + Graphics Update).

Btw: Under windows, the HD2600XT is a lot faster than the 7600GT in the previous iMacs (up to 100% faster, typically 50%)

Regards,
Stefan

PS: The latest mobility modder is from Oct. 6th 2007 - so everthing that is newer as Catalyst 7.9 is not sure to work with it. It may work, or it won't. I had 7.9 for a long time (until the official Bootcamp-Driver came out)