Old card, new drivers == better performance?

[Flandry]

I saw the Mobility Modder news on the homepage and found it an interesting tool. What I'm wondering, though, is if there's anything to be gained by installing the newest Catalyst drivers for my old 9600 mobility. I know IBM/Lenova's drivers are pretty old (not sure how old), but have my doubts that there's any point in going through the process.

Will an old piece of hardware like the 9600 Mobility see any benefits with new drivers?

 

[Menelmarar]

ATI probably stopped any serious dev work on the 9600 drivers quite a while ago.

However, without looking, as you pointed out, most laptop manufacturer supplied drivers are VERY old and outdated. So there's a reasonably good chance there might be a performance/compatibility increase.

I know on my ancient, ancient, R32, with Mobility 7000? I think. IBM's drivers were old, had lots of compatibility issues, texture corruption and weird bugginess in newer games. Used mobility modder and even though framerates sucked, was able to run WOW without weird graphic anomalies.

 

[Flandry]

ATI probably stopped any serious dev work on the 9600 drivers quite a while ago.

However, without looking, as you pointed out, most laptop manufacturer supplied drivers are VERY old and outdated. So there's a reasonably good chance there might be a performance/compatibility increase.

I know on my ancient, ancient, R32, with Mobility 7000? I think. IBM's drivers were old, had lots of compatibility issues, texture corruption and weird bugginess in newer games. Used mobility modder and even though framerates sucked, was able to run WOW without weird graphic anomalies.

Thanks for that feedback. I guess my biggest concern is that optimizations for later architectures in the newer drivers will actually decrease performance for the old devices. It doesn't sound very rational now that i type it, but i have basically zero confidence in ATI's driver devs.

Maybe i should download 3DMark and report what happens...

 

[Zefram0911]

I would definitely give it a try, I think they've made major improvements for the Catalyst suite even in terms of load time even if there may not be a performance increase with your card.

 

[Caffeinated]

The 9600Pro mobility was not a bad chip at all. I had one in my laptop and I was very satisfied with it. As other users suggested, find some modded drivers. It is an older part, and I wouldn't expect miracles, but it was by no means a poor part. I would think that with no AA, you could probably play some more recent titles, provided they don't need SM3.0, and you keep the resolution reasonable.

 

[Flandry]

The 9600Pro mobility was not a bad chip at all. I had one in my laptop and I was very satisfied with it. As other users suggested, find some modded drivers. It is an older part, and I wouldn't expect miracles, but it was by no means a poor part. I would think that with no AA, you could probably play some more recent titles, provided they don't need SM3.0, and you keep the resolution reasonable.

Yeah, i didn't think there was any way i would be able to play Supreme Commander without a new system, but my laptop handles it surprisingly well. I do have to select graphics settings medium-low, though.

I decided to go ahead and try it, and document my results for posterity. Here you go:

Lenova/IBM's latest driver available for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 (320/210 core/memory) in my T42 ThinkPad:

Dated 11/16/2006
6.14.10.6547

benchmark results:
Aquamark 3   
trial   1     2     3    average
GPU: 2358  2394  2400    2384
CPU: 8541  8633  8525    8566
FPS: 20.72 21.04 21.03   20.93

3DMark 2005
      782   953   914    883

ATI's Catalyst driver 7.9 via Mobility Mod

Dated 8/21/2007
8.411.0.0

benchmark results:
Aquamark 3   
trial   1     2     3    average
GPU: 2598  2598  2598    2598
CPU: 8572  8587  8545    8568
FPS: 22.56 22.56 22.56   22.56

3DMark 2005
     1037   981          1009

There's something really fishy about the Aquamark results with the new drivers. Do you see it?

Anyway, there was a noticeable improvement in smoothness and i believe there was also an improvement in image quality with the newer drivers. This is supported by the benchmark numbers, which improved by ~10%. I recommend updating to the newest drivers using Mobility Mod for anyone who has a ThinkPad with a Radeon that they game on.