OpenGL problem on Sony Z1VA

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops,comp.graphics.api.opengl (More info?)

I recently bought a Sony VAIO Z1VA with XP Home preinstalled.
It came equipped with ATI Mobility Radeon graphics.

The ATI Radeon details:
---
OpenGL
ATI Radeon 7000 DDR x86/SSE2
Version 1.3.3413 WinXP Release

Video Adapter
16MB Video, 56MB AGP
Texture Memory 72MB

Video Driver: ati2mtag.sys
Version: 6.13.10.6243
---

Before layering applications onto the machine I upgraded the
OS to WinXP Pro/SP1 + several Sony OEM drivers reapplied to
enable the NIC, WiFi, and etc.

Now I find that OpenGL performance is so slow and jerky/choppy
as to be useless. Windows OpenGL screensavers skip and jump around;
Sketchup 3.3 (an OpenGL based design program) freezes for seconds at a
time when hardware acceleration
is turned on.

The adapter looks OK to both the system (Control Panel/System/Hardware),
and to SisSoft Sandra. I'm also able to make setting through the ATI
OpenGL driver settings tab. Yet, OpenGL performance its totally hosed up.

What could be causing this?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops,comp.graphics.api.opengl (More info?)

Quaoar wrote:
> Mimo Zus wrote:
>
>>I recently bought a Sony VAIO Z1VA with XP Home preinstalled.
>>It came equipped with ATI Mobility Radeon graphics.
>>
>>The ATI Radeon details:
>>---
>>OpenGL
>>ATI Radeon 7000 DDR x86/SSE2
>>Version 1.3.3413 WinXP Release
>>
>>Video Adapter
>>16MB Video, 56MB AGP
>>Texture Memory 72MB
>>
>>Video Driver: ati2mtag.sys
>>Version: 6.13.10.6243
>>---
>>
>>Before layering applications onto the machine I upgraded the
>>OS to WinXP Pro/SP1 + several Sony OEM drivers reapplied to
>>enable the NIC, WiFi, and etc.
>>
>>Now I find that OpenGL performance is so slow and jerky/choppy
>>as to be useless. Windows OpenGL screensavers skip and jump around;
>>Sketchup 3.3 (an OpenGL based design program) freezes for seconds at a
>>time when hardware acceleration
>>is turned on.
>>
>>The adapter looks OK to both the system (Control
>>Panel/System/Hardware), and to SisSoft Sandra. I'm also able to make
>>setting through the ATI OpenGL driver settings tab. Yet, OpenGL
>>performance its totally hosed up.
>>
>>What could be causing this?
>
>
> Disk cleanup, defrag, review startup apps in msconfig, try it again.
> New installs are problematical until cleaned up. You also do not
> mention RAM. XP runs well in 512. Cleaned up, 256MB is "adequate".
> Anything below 256MB requires attention to every detail.
>
> Q
>
>
Thanks for the help.

Disk is very clean -- trying to avoid clutter slowdown like on my
desktop. Defrag very often to keep up performance. As for startup
apps, that too is strictly controlled via Startup Cop.

The laptop came with 512MB of DDR memory.

In general, XP runs very faast on it. In fact it runs just about every
application faster than my 1GHz AMD desktop; everything except for OpenGL.

I think there's something more fundamentally wrong with my
configuration, but I'm not familiar enough with OpenGL on XP to
have a clue -- yet.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops,comp.graphics.api.opengl (More info?)

Mimo Zus wrote:

> I recently bought a Sony VAIO Z1VA with XP Home preinstalled.
> It came equipped with ATI Mobility Radeon graphics.
>
> The ATI Radeon details:
> ---
> OpenGL
> ATI Radeon 7000 DDR x86/SSE2
> Version 1.3.3413 WinXP Release
>
> Video Adapter
> 16MB Video, 56MB AGP
> Texture Memory 72MB
>
> Video Driver: ati2mtag.sys
> Version: 6.13.10.6243
> ---
>
> Before layering applications onto the machine I upgraded the
> OS to WinXP Pro/SP1 + several Sony OEM drivers reapplied to
> enable the NIC, WiFi, and etc.
>
> Now I find that OpenGL performance is so slow and jerky/choppy
> as to be useless. Windows OpenGL screensavers skip and jump around;
> Sketchup 3.3 (an OpenGL based design program) freezes for seconds at a
> time when hardware acceleration
> is turned on.
>
> The adapter looks OK to both the system (Control Panel/System/Hardware),
> and to SisSoft Sandra. I'm also able to make setting through the ATI
> OpenGL driver settings tab. Yet, OpenGL performance its totally hosed up.
>
> What could be causing this?

I had similar trouble with my VAIO (mobility Radeon 7500), OpenGL
performance was poor and it was not refreshing the extended desktop. New
drivers from Sony did not help at all.

I downloaded the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI and a little tool
called Dhmodtool2.0. This tool enables installation of Catalyst drivers
for the Mobility range. The process is as follows:

- start Catalyst setup (it will unzip into c:\ati directory)
- once Catalyst tells you that it cannot install because you don't have
compatible hardware, start the Dhmodtool and install the drivers through
its GUI

It worked fine for me and OpenGL is now quite perky.

If it doesn't work for you, I hear there are unofficial Omega drivers
for ATI cards that solved problems of lots of people, I haven't tried
them myself.