At 01:25:25 on Wednesday Wednesday 23 September 2009, "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday 22 September 2009 08:01:23 am Stan Goodman wrote:
I am considering purchasing a new laptop (the old T21 havng died), and am collecting information on required drivers. The openSuSE page on graphics drivers tells me that my video card (Intel Integrated GMA 4500MHD) would work if I install an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 driver, v8.40.4.
A visit to the ATI driver site shows me that the information given above is not complete, because Radeon has a raft of drivers for notebook Linux machines, according to card type. The list includes a number of "Mobility Radeon Xnnnn" drivers, where "nnn" is a three or four digit number, but there is no entry for X1150. I assume that the X means "Xpress", but have no idea which listed type will work with the machine.
If somebody understands ATI nomenclature sufficiently, I would like to know which type is sufficiently close to 1150 to use in the machine of interest.
Do not buy anything with ATI in it.
The 8.40.4 ATI driver is ancient history and AMD no longer supports any card earlier than the 2400 series. Intel has been a disaster with 11.1. (works OK with other distros)
The ATI driver came up because the openSuSE compatibility page said, without explanation, that the ATI driver was necessary. I had not noticed that the really tiny print in the web page about the prospective computer says that the machine is equipped with GMA 4500MHD graphics card, so it requires the corresponding Intel driver. Fortunately Mike, who has either better eyes or larger fonts, noticed that ATI is not what to look for. Hopefully, tomorrow I will find the right driver to d/l from one of Intels jungle of websites, and then order the machine, before the US$ evaporates completely. As far as I have ever been able to tell, machines advertised in this country are what they are, so to speak. If the picture says it has GMA 4500MHD graphics card, that's what it has; there aren't the customization options you have in the US. You don't often see machines with NVidia cards. But in the past, I have been very happy with Intel hardware. I am using oS v11,1 on an Intel 915GAV mother board on my desktop machine, with great satisfaction. No disaster here so far.
Bottom line, spend the relatively small extra $ and buy something with nvidia inside ;-) HP maybe?
-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com
-- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org