Notebook makers are notoriously slow at releasing the latest video drivers. Who can blame them? Drivers come out on a weekly basis so its hard to keep pace and the majority of PC users will find a way to screw their machines up and that means more support calls.
For those of that know what we are doing, there are a few options:
- Modify the INF files of the latest leaked driver set to include our device IDs.
- Download the driver we want with someone else’s modified INF.
- Find a source for ready to install mobile drivers (preferably pre-tweaked).
Number one and two insure that you always have the latest driver release and probably the latest bug that you might be the first to discover. This takes more work, and there is no prize for finding bugs. Your discovery will be useless unless you know how to file a bug report anyways.
For busy people that want to enjoy their notebooks I suggest option three.
There are a few choices, I’ll rank them for you:
- Notebook Forums MobileForce VS – By far the friendliest option. Ready to install with no fuss. Installer prompts for optional tweaks (yes, you want them). There is a good community of notebook enthusiasts on this site, bookmark (along with NBR of course)
- Omega Drivers – Not updated as frequently as they used to be, this author is the father of great community drivers in my opinion. I would have never finished Neverwinter Nights on my notebook a few years if it were not for these drivers correcting numerous ATI issues.
- LaptopVideo2Go – Another site with a great community worthy of a bookmark. Technically these drivers fall into category two above and will require some fiddling. The frequency of releases is highest here.
What can expect?
I tried the 174.31 driver tonight with tweaks. You might see lower scores in benchmarks like 3dMark06 – I saw a 400-500 point drop from my 7000 baseline. But in Crysis I found a 10-15% increase in performance with results going from 27-28 fps to 31 (1400*960 and all settings MEDIUM). Call of Duty and UT3 performance is also very good.
