Please Help Me Understand the Phrase "Unified Driver Set"

[Caveman]

Talking video cards here... I thought both nvidia and ATI (Catalyst) use a "unified" driver set that supports ALL their hardware...

I just bought a Compaq laptop and I've got to reformat the HD, load new drivers, etc...

Looked on ATIs website for the latest Catalyst (they show 4.1), and thought I'd use these though I found a "disclaimer" instructing me to use a driver set published by the laptop manufacturer for the 9200 video card in the laptop...

So... Is the ATI catalyst only "unified" for desktop GPUs and not mobile GPUs???? How about Nvidia... are they "unified" across platforms?

 

[Matthias99]

No, NVIDIA does the same thing. Laptop drivers are specifically set up for the particular chipset, memory configuration, and display used in that laptop.

Now, they probably *could* do it all with a single unified package, but it would add a lot of overhead to the desktop drivers to be able to detect and support all those extra configurations, and it would also add overhead to the laptop drivers (where memory and CPU time are generally at more of a premium).

Rest assured that they are, basically, the same drivers, just slimmed down and tweaked for that particular system.

 

[WHipLAsh13]

I know I run the 3.10's on my laptop with a build in 7500 and never have a problem. They want you to use the drivers released by the manufacturer so you are their problem and not ATI's when you have problems with the video card.

 

[rbV5]

IIRC, the Omega drivers support ATI mobile chips if you want ot use the latest CATS

 

[JBT]

You can also use something called mobile mod. That fixes the inf files so that they can be used on laptop screens. I use cat3.10 on my laptop. Will update to 4.1's soon.

 

[Caveman]

Where do you get the "mobile mod"?