Graphics Drivers: Substandard Internet Support
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: 3d, gaming, notebooks, all
- 1. 3D Gaming On A Notebook PC: Fantasy Or Reality?
- 2. Bread And Circuses: Test Scenarios And Benchmarks
- 3. Overview Of Our Test Systems
- 4. Overview Of Our Test Systems, Continued
- 5. First Impressions Of The Acer Aspire 5672WLMi
- 6. Acer Aspire 5672 WLMi Support
- 7. Touchpad And Keyboard
- 8. First Impressions Of The Hewlett Packard Compaq Nx9420
- 9. Graphics Drivers: Internet Support
- 10. HP Compaq Nx9420 Support, Continued
- 11. Touchpad And Keyboard
- 12. First Impressions Of The Asus A7J
- 13. Graphics Drivers: Substandard Internet Support
- 14. A7J Support
- 15. Analog And Digital TV Plus FM Radio
- 16. Webcam As Notebook Watchdog
- 17. Sound Quality
- 18. First Impressions Of The Alienware Aurora M7700
- 19. Graphics Drivers: Excellent Internet Support
- 20. Alienware Aurora Support
- 21. Alienware Aurora Support, Continued
- 22. A Collection Of Sensible And Senseless Accessories
- 23. Sound Quality
- 24. The Graphics Processor Can Be Upgraded, But Be Careful
- 25. System Restore And Recovery Is Not For Wimps
- 26. An Overview Of Graphics Subsystems
- 27. Display Quality: Static Images
- 28. Display Quality Assessment: Static Images
- 29. Display Quality: The Motion Of Gaming
- 30. Is Gaming Possible At Native Resolution?
- 31. System Temperatures And Noise Levels While Gaming
- 32. Noise Levels For Various Usage Scenarios
- 33. Install And Load Times For Games
- 34. Benchmarks And Settings
- 35. Synthetic Game Performance
- 36. Real-World Game Performance
- 37. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
- 38. Spellforce 2
- 39. Need For Speed: Most Wanted V1.3
- 40. System Performance
- 41. MobileMark2005: System Performance And Battery Life
- 42. Gaming Battery Lifetimes
- 43. Which Graphics Notebook For Whom?
- 44. Is Notebook SLI The Future?
- 45. Summary And Conclusions
13. Graphics Drivers: Substandard Internet Support
The A7J comes with the pretty old graphics driver version 8.183 for the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor. The support area on the Asus Web site makes the somewhat newer version 8.204 available for download. But we were unable to download this file successfully by the time we started our testing. There's no dedicated support server available for Europe, and the Global and US areas deliver transfer rates of only about 5 kB/s (with only 3 kB/s from the China server). At these lame download speeds, the 65 MB file would take 5 to 8 hours to download. This is an unacceptable time frame.
And again, there's no reference driver available through the ATI home page. In fact, there's no support available there either for the Radeon X1x00 graphics processors or for products from Asus.
Alas, the factory installed driver isn't current enough to support Spellforce 2. The game menus are all inaccessible. You can't even get into 3D game play. Before the game finishes loading, Windows crashes with a blue screen and the notebook restarts itself.
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Oblivion has got to be the best MMORGP I have ever played. WOW can not compare to how well the game fells and plays. The Ups: Awsome Graphics is a complete understatement, the game offers vanity mode and 1st person vew, costomizeable characters, and loads of weapons and quests and guilds. The Downs: Glitchy combat when rendering wolves and dogs... and thats it... BUY THE DAMN THING... YOU'LL LOVE IT!!!!!!!