ATI graphics driver crashes

[Aedan]

I have a machine with an ATI Mobility Fire GL T2 adapter, and whilst it's mostly stable, I'd rather it was completely stable!

Playing EQ2, the adapter/driver has a tendancy to occasionally lock up the machine, especially when any of the scenes have water reflections in them. Sometimes Windows comes back with a "driver ati2dvag got stuck in an infinite loop" error if Windows catches it before the machine dies.

The driver version is 8.133.2 which appears to be the latest as far as I can tell. Any suggestions on fixing this problem?

[Aedan]

Trawling through the Internet, it is rather looking like it's another typical ATI can't write drivers issue. I thought this sort of stuff supposedly stopped when ATI worked on the Radeon drivers?

[cadaveca]

there is a patch avaalable for the mobility drivers...i'll see if i can locate a link for ya aedan but is it an ACER notebook?


http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst/ click this link for the driver.

[cadaveca]

FOnd a good one for you..convert standard destop driver's to your mobility adapter!


http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/


Support for your chipset is included!

[dsio]

Dave, I have a Compaq M300 laptop with a Rage Mobility LT Pro. I have almost the same instability issue. Randomly during web browsing, winamping, or anything else for that matter, I get a BSOD and ATI2DVAG.dll is thrown as the problem.

Changing to a newer driver made it alot more stable, and now it does it maybe once every two or three weeks instead of once a day, but its never good. It isnt when its hot, or cold, or under heavy load, or light, its just completely random.

This is the Win2k/XP ATI driver, not the Catalyst.

[MONKEYMAN]

Not sure if this was relevant, remembered coming across it when I was sorting a mate's pc out.....


http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic15393.html

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by dsio

Dave, I have a Compaq M300 laptop with a Rage Mobility LT Pro. I have almost the same instability issue. Randomly during web browsing, winamping, or anything else for that matter, I get a BSOD and ATI2DVAG.dll is thrown as the problem.

Changing to a newer driver made it alot more stable, and now it does it maybe once every two or three weeks instead of once a day, but its never good. It isnt when its hot, or cold, or under heavy load, or light, its just completely random.

This is the Win2k/XP ATI driver, not the Catalyst.

use the mobility patch i liosted here, and grab the lastest CCC desktop driver. makes sure to have .net installed.

ati2dvag.dll crashes are not good...and generally show some sort of overheating or a bad ramchip.

[dsio]

The laptop is one of the micro-thin notebooks of the pentium 3 era, about 6mm thick excluding the screen, and 11mm thick including it. The cooling is terrible, and its often well over 90C, which is where the reading from the thermal probe seams to go off the scale.

That would make sense to me then.

Do the Catalyst CCC drivers actually work on older Rage laptops?

[cadaveca]

ooops. missed the rage bit. i think the last driver to support a rage card was a rage driver.

[Aedan]

I tried the Radeon drivers with the Patje hack. Whilst they didn't appear to cause the same lockup, there were lots of graphical glitches (think clipping plane issues) and oddities (think doors appearing closed when they're open).

The mobility drivers you dug up claim not to support the graphics card though. The machine is actually an IBM T42p.

[cadaveca]

the graphical issues(clipping, missing textures, etc) are acommon issue on the mobility chipsets. the besti can suggest is to try a few drivers and see what works for you. Alternatively, you can send Patje a email and he'll try to sort it out for you if your chipset is not properly supported.

IBM are a bit better at thier driver support than other companies. I mentioned acer becaseu no single acer ATI laptop can use the mobility driver, or so it seems. I've had my hands on three or foour of them with the same issue...most often it leads to the laptop not being able to pull the sceen out of standby.

Make sure you have an up-to-date version of DX installed as well...

[Aedan]

As far as I could ascertain, only HP and IBM appear to have laptops based on the Fire GL T2 chip. Patje makes a comment in the forum that the Fire GL T2 chip should really be removed from the list of supported chips, as it isn't really properly supported. He also comments that the chip is officially supported in the official 5.9s, but only for Win XP.

My experience with the 5.13s is that they're not interested in my chip at all...

[cadaveca]

yeah, you'll find that missing support is pretty common for quite a few of the ATI mobility products. It's an area that needs attention, but the onus falls on the laptop maker, unfortunately. at least you were able to get some sort of info about it, as surely you are not the only person in this situation.

[Aedan]

As far as I've been able to discover, IBM/Lenovo and HP have the most up-to-date drivers. I'm a little surprised, as it's not a Mobility Radeon product, but a Mobility Fire GL product instead. I noted that there were a number of unhappy bunnies on the 'net who bought the machines due to the Fire GL support, only to discover that it's not really a workstation class product, despite the name.

[cadaveca]

Heh. there is no real difference between the radeon and the fire-gl, other than the driver, anyway. Th radeon products are allowed to make rendering errors, within a certain margin, while the fireGL must draw every pixel true.