Sick of Dell 1505e / ATI Videocard

[Boney]

Quick Specs:
1.66 C2D
x1400 mobile
1gig ram
xp w/ sp2


When I first got my laptop i updated all the drivers via Dell's "recommended" ones on their website. After I did that I noticed that when I would play a game, say css, I got really bad fps and the game would crash, bluescreen, blackscreen, or just throw errors.

So I go to ATI's site and try to download their x1400 mobile driver and when you have to download that little "verifier", it tells me my computer is not compatible? wtf? even though i know its an x1400 in my laptop and im running xp with the latest updates. So i google the newest catalyst and just download and install the driver directly. The laptop now runs at a MUCH better frame rate in-game and the graphics do look much improved but I still get bluescreens and crashes every now and then, enough to be an annoyance. Sometimes when it crashes it will actually tell me what the crash is comming from and it always says something about aticat. or ati-something.

Does anyone know how I could try and A. either locate and fix what exactly is making my computer so unstable? or B. find a working stable driver for the x1400 mobile video card?

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Genx87]

It has been my experience on the Nvidia side of mobile devices that video card drivers are vendor specific. I couldnt go to Nvidia's site and download the latest drivers for video chipset in the laptop and have it work.

/shrug

 

[Boney]

With that unfortunatly falls on 2 problems for me:

Dell's ATI driver is A year out of date (+ very buggy, lack of decent fps in games, overall unstable)

and

ATI's x1400 drivers dont even verify correctly, and do the aformentioned problems in the first post.

GGrreeaattttt........

 

[IlllI]

there used to be a program out there that someone made (i forgot what it was called though) that could take ordinary drivers and enable them to be used with laptop gpus. it came out a couple years ago, and i've no idea if its still updated.

anyone recall what that program was?

edit: i found it...i think. it used to be called Patje's Mobility Modder, but now it seems like its just called mobility modder Text