Help with Mobility FireGL V5250 with XP Pro!

It seems to me that I can not for the love of God find the correct drivers for my Lenovo ThinkPad T60's ATI FireGL V5250.

General Overview of Video Card:
Make: ATI
Model: FireGL V5250
Type: PCI-Express
Memory: 256MB, 256-bit

General Overview of the problem:

The laptop came with Windows Vista Business preloaded, and everything worked great, but I did not want Vista, so I threw XP Professional on to it. Now, the drivers from the ATI site just do not work. Period. I do the select OS and card and everything, but when I try to install, it says I do not have the correct hardware, and aborts the installation.

So then I went to the Lenovo website, and downloaded the "preinstalled" drivers for XP Professional, and that installed without a problem. It detected my video card model and everything, but when I go to the video card options, it thinks that the card is 512MB, not 256MB. And worst of all, it thinks that it is 512 MB HyperMemory, not dedicated).

Here is a screenshot:
**Well, I had a link to a screenshot, but apparently I can not post a URL because it thinks that I am spamming my website, so I will type it out**

Krasch dot org slash ati dot jpg

So, my laptop thinks that my 256MB dedicated video card is a 512MB shared cache card. Therefore, all the games that I play run absolutely TERRIBLY. Lag, low fps, low resolution, the whole deal.

However, when Vista is running on this laptop, the video card works flawlessly (but I hate Vista, so yeah).

I have torn the ATI support site apart looking for an answer. Does anyone know anything that may help me with this dilemma?! I have not called the ATI phone support yet, but I will if no one else can help.

This post was a long shot, but may pay out in the long run, whether it be for me or someone else with the same problem.

P.S. - Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn will not boot either, because the version of X used is incompatible with my card and shuts down. Anyone have a fix for that?

Hi, I can´t help you because I have exactly the same problem. Did you fix it ? If you did, can you tell me how please ?
Thank you very much.
Sebastian (Argentina)

Hi guys.
I was looking on the internet till I found this post. Same story here.. exactly the same problem. Catalyst shows a 512 MB (hypermemory), while TechpowerUp (program to look at your videocard) only shows 256 MB (GDDR3).

Can anyone help us? its such a strange thing and It really makes me doubt if my card is working correctly, since I already experienced some strange issues with new games like (Age of Conan). AoC has a really strange issue with ATI cards

well whats your card?


As for the ram reading wrong its cuz your card is a hypermemory meaning its got its own onboard gddr3 ram (the 256 shown in techpowerup) and it can use your system ram as well as the onboard ra,. That is why ccc is showing 512mb of ram for the vidoe card.

mmm so there is 512mb available, but only 256 is used atm (Techpowerup).

If this is the case, is it possible to increase it? or somehow make it function properly? I really had some trouble with this card. I do know it should work way better than it's doing atm. Please help.

no there is only 256 on the card. the progra, your using is only reading the cards memory. not the total memory (onboard+shared) that ccc is reading. What card are you using to play the game at and better yet list the spec of your pc

Its the thinkpad T60p (laptop)
it has uses this card (the fireGL V5250)

Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad T60p
Intel® Core2Duo T7200 processor (2,0 GHz; 667MHz FSB; 4MB L2 cache)
2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
100 GB 7200 rpm harddisk
DVD-RW DL
15,4" WSXGA+ TFT, resolutie 1680x1050
ATI Mobility Fire GL V5250, 256 MB
802.11 a/b/g wireless
10/100/1000 mbit
PCMCIA: 1 type I/II; 1 Expresscard
USB, infrarood, bluetooth, modem, windows XP (later Vista)

thats about all i know atm ^^

well tbh your not going to get gaming card performance out of a workstation card. The work station cards aere more designed for cad programs.

It may run games but not as well.

Did you buy the laptop for gaming?

I know it aint the best. I'm using it for over a year now. I just did not expect to give up on me so soon.
It plays most games fine, medium quality and stable fps (CoD4, etc). Its just when I bought Age of Conan, when I encounterd strange behavior also discribed on their forums:
When I put it on high grapics with high resilution, I get the same fps, as when I play it on low and a low resilution. Also it keeps swapping between shader models (3.0, 2.x and 2.0). Its really strange.

First I disabled every high grapic option on ATI tray tools. Secondly I used ATI tray tools, to tweak up multi treading support (advised on the AoC forums). This did not have any effect.

Now I'd like to try something new. I got advise from someone to put up my System Memory Texture Cache Size on maximum. He is in the same situation as me. Trying to play this game on a laptop with almost the same specs.

Could this work? If it could, how do I increase my System Memory Texture Cache Size? please help ^^.