Dell 1501 with ATI xpress 1150 256mb (Part II)

[Dukesite]

From a previous post, some other people and I were having problems with this laptop and changing the UMA size. After a BIOS update, that problem was solved.

Problem number 2: If you download the latest driver for the Motherboard/Video Card from ATI, the installation terminated with a message "setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware". ATI Support tells me to call Dell, and Dell support doesn't have a clue. Anyone have any ideas?

see previous post for more info about problem number 1
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic66667.html

 

[Tencera01]

All great, but true explaination...

What about this scenario.....

what if ATI sent dell 512 MB HM chips, labeled as 256 MB HM chips.... then if you set HM at 256 with a gig of ram, your system would register 768 MB ram and would show 512 MB of video memory,,, HMMM ,,, nice little screw up huh,,,,

why? well if ATI produces a million 512 chips vs. 500K 256 and 500K 512... then they profit more money... and since their cost is the same for either in Malaysia, they just get consumers to pay two different prices...

if you go to Dell 1150 express upgrade released on 1-16-07, yesterday then the upgrade changes catalyst control to not have buffer options and gives you 512MB of Video memory if you have a gig or ram installed....

but don't take my word for it..... please someone tell me I am wrong... ..

 

[Thantelius]

It's very strange this flaw behaviour, once that the UMA value is changed in the original Catalyst, there's no way to choose a value bigger than 16 MB.

I have found that executing the BIOS update this value is reseted to 128 MB, and installing the latest version of the Catalyst drivers posted by Dell, is a good combination to obtain a good performance, but when will be released a BIOS or a driver that allows to set this value to 256 MB?, my system has 2Gb of RAM and the video card shows a value of 512.

 

[Tencera01]

1501 inspiron video card issue cont.

Dear all.

Please step back for a second with me. Computers are not people. Therefore, they can not lie. they are not capeable of such. You can set a computer to do anything you want. Manually. Then afterwords, the pc will use an internal calculator to show you the results of your works. When is the last time, you had a calculator, give you, the wrong number? Never.

My point is. If you have a gig of ram installed. Then set hyper memory to 256. If on reboot your diagnostic and system properties calculate that you have 768 mb of ram and 512 video, It can't be wrong. It's just a calculator. Therefore the conclusion is that you actually have a 512 hyper video card. Unless Dell has modified the internal calculator to lie.??

please tell me what you think...... at any rate.
1. make sure you have bios 1.7.0 !!
2. make sure you have the video driver update from dell posted 1/16/2007 !!

 

[Thantelius]

Sorry i can't find where the "Hypermemory" value could be changed

 

[Tispho]

Hello all

I have upgraded my Dell inspiron Bios to 1.7

I have also installed the latest ATI driver from DELLs website (the one from ATIs website will not work). The new version of catalyst does not have an option to change UMA buffer.

does anyone know what settings to use to optimize settings to run Battlefield 2142 smoothly?

I would like to allocate 256 MB of video ram when playing games and 128 when im not playing games.

integrated memory is horrible... shoulda waited a month and purchased a core duo with an X1300 for about the same price.


For Battlefield 2142 in game Im using the lowest settings, in ATI catalyst I am using the performance mode. I also have my laptop set on always on so that processor runs at its fullest. Still low FPS.

 

[babydaddybrad]

What OS are ya'll running? I'm running vista home basic and dont even have an option to change my buffer size. I have upgraded the BIOS, drivers and control center software and still nothing. When I look in the help it says' "Select a buffer size from the dropdown menu." What drop down menu?

 

[raybay]

Tispho, you have it as good as you are going to get it with that particular model... It is not designed to do advanced gaming. It is a business machine. You should buy a high end unit for what you want to do.