ATI X1600 showing as x1300.

thehomeofDob

Hey guys,
I've just updated the graphics drivers for a PC I purchased the other day. It's a HP M7635.uk, which is suposed to have an ATI x1600 in it. Everything was fine till I updated the drivers tonight.

I went to the ATI website, selected Win Media Centre > Radeon > x1600series. Which brings you here.
I downloaded the driver plus CCC and then the driver on it's own. After removing the old drivers and installing the new ones, Device Manager is saying I now have an x1300.

Look at this for more detail. Click for screenshot.

Is this okay? Is there an issue I should be worried about? It's also strange that there doesn't seem to be a temp monitor on the card, or is it not strange at all? I've checked the HP website, no drivers that I can see.

Thanks in advance.

christophicus

What card does CCC say it is?? Download sisoft sandra and see what that says.

thehomeofDob

This is what SiSoft Sandra says Click for image

The PC was bought in PC World, got a great deal on it, and this is what their technical support site say about the spec. Click

christophicus

Interesting. Well it says you have the x1600 chipset , so id be happy enough with that. Does it have the same core and memory clock as it should?

8T8

The X1600SE is an OEM special this means it was a run of a card not found in retail channels and is not properly supported within the regular ATI driver.

This is why the driver incorrectly identifies it as an X1300 but Sandra shows the chipset as an X1600.

Use the ATI Omega drivers these properly support the X1600SE (at least according to the site they do).
*Uninstall existing ATI drivers & control panel
*Dismiss driver install prompts
*Run Omega driver installer

The Omega drivers are tweaked versions of the official drivers for slightly better image quality they tend to trail the latest release but not by too long.

If you where so inclined you could mod the original ATI drivers to include support for the X1600SE but you would need to take a look at the PCI ID .inf entries in the driver and duplicate them.

thehomeofDob

Well, I've tried the Omega drivers, but the card is still showing up as an X1300. I guess I'm stuck until I purchase a new card. Will this driver issue adversley affect performance? Should I attempt to edit the original drivers? Or is it pretty much a non issue?

8T8

Hmm they mentioned SE support on the site, guess not it seems.

It is hard to say whether it is affected in some fashion unless you do benchmarks to compare the two drivers.

I will take a look at the Packard Bell driver and the ATI driver and see if the official drivers can be easily modded to support the X1600SE but don't get your hopes up.

8T8

Okay here goes I hope this works but I have no way of testing if it does or will.

Download the ATI Catalyst 7.2 driver 32-bit WinXP.

Uninstall any current ATI driver and control panel and delete the ATI folder on C:\

Download these two .inf files
C2_41238.inf
CX_41238.inf

Run the ATI driver installer so it extracts the files and then cancel the driver install after the wizard pops up.

Go into
C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-2_xp_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_41238\Driver\2KXP_INF

Copy and paste the two .inf files into this folder overwriting the current ones.

Now go to & run setup.exe
C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-2_xp_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_41238\

Fingers crossed if all goes well the card should display as a Packard Bell X1600.

thehomeofDob

Thanks for the trouble you've gone through to help 8T8, still no joy though. I can't seem to find the original HP driver either. Will take a look through the recovery discs and see what can be found. Now it's time to look into a new graphics card.

Thanks again for the help

8T8

Whoop's my mistake got my wires crossed there that's a HP OEM card I though it was a Packard Bell model.

I will have a look for the HP driver and give it one more go.

If you don't feel like straying to far from what you've got you can pick up an X1650 Pro for 90 bucks and will be a bit faster than the X1600SE.

Edit: Right all I could find was the Vista display driver for your PC from which I extracted PCI device ID's and transplanted them into the ATI XP .inf so if you want to give it one more go download the .inf files again and do the same as above the links below have been updated if it works the card will hopefully appear as a HP X1600 series.

C2_41238.inf
CX_41238.inf

WillieDH

This type of thing stinks, its the same with all vendors "SE" or "LE" cards, which are de-tuned versions of the retail cards.

They shouldn't be allowed to do it, they should be forced to call those cards something lie ATI 0600 series so you know what you are getting.

It's against Irish consumer law to take advantage of a lack of knowledge of a consumer(s), ASAI guidelines.

If I were you i'd go back to the retailer and say that you've not been supplied with an ATI 1600 card and ask what are they going to do about it.

Chances are they will fit a retail 1600 for you to placate the situation and avoid a returned unit because if you complain they would be prevented from ever advertising one of these systems with an ATI1600SE , and thats true !

W

8T8

Unfortunately the X1600SE is serviced by HP not by the retail channel so the onus is on HP to provide driver updates which is of course ludicrous but it's the way some of these outfits actually work :mad:

thehomeofDob

I'll try those new files as soon as I can 8T8, thanks.

@Willie, unfortunately, I'm not so sure there's a whole lot I can do about getting the card replaced from where I bought it. I work there, and got it for half price, so my managers not going to be too lienient. Still, the spec, for €500 euro is shockingly good.

TerrorFirmer

WillieDH wrote:

This type of thing stinks, its the same with all vendors "SE" or "LE" cards, which are de-tuned versions of the retail cards.

They shouldn't be allowed to do it, they should be forced to call those cards something lie ATI 0600 series so you know what you are getting.

It's against Irish consumer law to take advantage of a lack of knowledge of a consumer(s), ASAI guidelines.

If I were you i'd go back to the retailer and say that you've not been supplied with an ATI 1600 card and ask what are they going to do about it.

Chances are they will fit a retail 1600 for you to placate the situation and avoid a returned unit because if you complain they would be prevented from ever advertising one of these systems with an ATI1600SE , and thats true !

W

It's advertised as an X1600SE - in fairness they always attach the LE or SE part. There is nothing illegal in what they are doing. It's up the consumer to research these things if they are so vital.

deise_guy

I picked up a HP Media Center PC on special offer at pcworld. It supposedly contained a Radeon X1650 SE.
When I upgraded my drivers and started seeing it as an x1300 i started digging. in System Information >>Components>>Display I can see a reference to am RV515 chip, This is the chip that is only found in X1300 cards http://www.beyond3d.com/resources/chip/103 . X1600 cards are based on the RV530. HP have clearly been selling dressed up x1300 as x1600se, which must be fraudulent. So has anyone else out there bought a HP PC containing a X1600SE graphics card? I think it is time to sue HP and stop this practice.

christophicus

that se at the end of the name means that the card is not one that cn be baught as componnt, meaning u cant relly go by normal setups.

8T8

Yup and on top of that they are completely free to brand the card as whatever they want even if it uses an RV515 at it's core which is something ATI has done for a long time. For instance the new Radeon HD 2300 is actually based off an RVxxx class GPU.

Though that would explain why it shows as an X1300 just with higher clocks (I presume).

thehomeofDob

Time for a new graphics card for me anyway - I can't play Rainbow Six Vegas at 1440x900 with anything turned up or on :-/ 8800GTS as soon as I get paid me thinks. Just dunno should I go with the 320 or 640.

christophicus

320 for best bang fr buk.

christophicus

320 for best bang fr buk.

thehomeofDob

Any particular brand?

Anti

They are all the say to be honest. No diference in them at standard clocks. So get the cheapest you can find.

TerrorFirmer

thehomeofDob wrote:

Time for a new graphics card for me anyway - I can't play Rainbow Six Vegas at 1440x900 with anything turned up or on :-/ 8800GTS as soon as I get paid me thinks. Just dunno should I go with the 320 or 640.

Vegas is a crappy port...don't use it as a base for your cards performance. It runs pretty bad even on my x1800xt, and it doesn't even look that good for the drain its putting on it.

deise_guy

I'm still not giving up on this, I hate being ripped off
The card in the computer is a Griffon512, that was confirmed by HP Indain Tech support. googling this shows up this
"HP ATI Radeon X1300
(Griffon512) DVI-I PCI-E
16X ATi ATI Radeon X1300 512 MB"
http://www.allion.com/equipment/Display%20Adapter.pdf


Calling something an "X1600" is not just a brand name, if you look at the ATI X1600 series manual https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/manuals/rv530_radeonx1600.pdf
It says a feature of the x1600 is 157 million transistors, this clearly links the name x1600 with the specific chip(rv530), and cannot be stuck on anything that HP wants to.

thehomeofDob

HavoK wrote:

Vegas is a crappy port...don't use it as a base for your cards performance. It runs pretty bad even on my x1800xt, and it doesn't even look that good for the drain its putting on it.

The x1300 is crap either way The rest of the system is decent, with an e6400 and 2GB of DDR2, so it's the GPU bottlenecking. I probably won't ever play at higher than 1440x900, maybe 1650x1050 (or whatever the next step up is), 8800GTS looks to be the best way to go.