Does my Graphics card need to be replaced?

[losfreddy]

Hi all. My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6898, originally windows vista 64 bit, now windows 7 32 bit.

I have been having trouble with my drivers lately. I have the ATI black bars on my video game when trying to play Battlefield 1942. I have researched solutions, but none seem to work.

Also, i have booted up Ubuntu 10.10 via ubs drive and attempts to download the proper graphics driver failed.

Im pretty sure i am running a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series graphics cards... Attempts at loading the ATI driver program i get error message "ATI Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware/software on your computer"

Everything was fine on windows vista, thou i never tried ubuntu on vista

Is it time for a new graphics card??

 

[DeaconFrost]

Most likely, you aren't going to be replacing the graphics card in a laptop. Are you getting the graphics drivers right from Toshiba? If not, try there. The bars might be due to a difference in screen resolution versus game resolution. I vaguely remember an option in the ATI control panel that lets you stretch smaller resolutions to fill the screen.

 

[losfreddy]

Im sure i need to "upgrade" from current version to 8.831.2.0, but these driver update programs are BS; They all want u to pay and no guarantee to fix the problem. Im pretty sure ive downloaded the correct version 3 times and it just wont install. Its frustrating and lame. Toshiba SHOULD allow driver upgrades for free, but dont. I think im doing everything correct. Not sure whats going on. ATI Black bars persist

 

[mrdemon]

ATI Catalyst

Have you tried this Driver set, Also have you tryed too uninstall your drivers that you have installed at the moment.

Also when your in game have you tried too change the res too a lower setting too see if the black lines go. Also In game, select Vsink...

 

[stormy13]

Since when did Toshiba charge for driver updates? If you have some site trying to charge you for a driver update it isn't Toshiba. The download page for your model is here,

Model Content Page

Unfortunately Toshiba is rather lax in providing much more than a single driver update beyond the initial driver that the computer shipped with. not only that but you have a newer driver version than what they have available.

Toshiba is also one of the very few laptop manufacturers that will not allow the reference video drivers to be installed (the same applies to any of their laptops with Nvidia graphics as well). This is directly from the release notes from the link mrdemon posted,

AMD Catalyst

The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:

• Any notebook launched after this driver release
• Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel® chipsets.
• Toshiba® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
• Sony® VAIO® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
• Panasonic® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)

Unfortunately it doesn't do much for you or others in the same situation. There are a couple of things to try short of contacting Toshiba directly and asking if or when they might release a newer driver for it. One is to go here,

Mobility Modder - ATI Version, Install the Latest Drivers on your ATI laptop

and try the Mobility Modder on the latest driver from AMD, but I have a feeling it will still fail as it hasn't been updated in quite a while and doesn't work too well with the newer drivers.

Another option is to look for a Toshiba laptop with a newer model AMD card in it and see if the driver from it will install on yours.

 

[DeaconFrost]

First, don't ever use a driver update program. They are useless, rarely work, and are meant to do something you should be doing yourself anyway. Second, if the drivers install okay but are showing you black lines, then it isn't a matter of an issue with the drivers. It will likely come down to resolution, as I suggested before. Compare your native resolution to what you have the games set for.

 

[losfreddy]

awesome. Thanks guys. ATI Black bars is fixed! Still failing to download ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver for Ubuntu 10.10, but happy to get my game fixed in the least