Out of date ATI drivers.

[Michael Piazza]

How can I update the ATI mobility drivers on my older Sagar laptop? Sagar has stopped at 8.3 and I need later ones for the newer games. I have the NP8760 with the HD 5870. It can still handle the latest games power wise but they are all flagging the out of date driver and some do not work correctly.

I had this same problem with with an older Acer Ferrari laptop in that neither Acer nor ATI would provide an updated driver. Had to find this obscure website where the guy has a tool that would strip out the STUPID hardware version check and allow you to install the latest and greatest drivers. That driver is working like a dream.

I will stick with NVidia from now on. This laziness on ATI's part in their lack of future support for their hardware sucks and I'm tired of running into this limitation!

 

[Emerald]

it is not ATI fault but the laptop manufacturer.

ATI does not create drivers for laptops. the drivers are written by the laptop manufacturer in your case Sager and Acer.

 

[Michael Piazza]

Not quite true. ATI creates reference drivers for the specific mobility graphics chips and then washes their hands of them when they pass them off to the various OEM's. They still update their drivers, however, they put these STUPID time or chip id checks into their install routines so that they refuse to allow you to update later versions of the drivers. NVidia doesn't do that. Never has. There is a limit as to how long an OEM can support a past chip, however, they will certainly be compatible for a couple of years rather than only allowing the one driver that came with the laptop to ever be installed. that is ridiculous. When it comes to NVidia the responsibility is yours to make sure that driver supports your chipset but if you want to try and install it and screw up your configuration NVidia allows you to. Its on your own head then not their fault. ATI is like HP...put the product out there and then forget about ever getting updated drivers for the next OS or anything. Your on your own with them. No more! I won't buy any more of anything by ATI/AMD. Sorry...