Resolved Terrible graphics

[Ishayu]

Hey MacRumors!,

The issue:
The Boot Camp graphics drivers are bad at best, broken at worst. They run games really poorly and lag around a lot. This is because they are from 4/1/11, which is now more than a year old. They haven't been updated to properly support newer games, and these games break. I tried to update the drivers but AMD's driver package contends I do not have an AMD card, but I have a MacBook Pro Ultimo 15" so that's obviously not true.

How do I upgrade my driver stack to something that isn't more than a year old?

The story (for those who care, ignore if you don't - it's not needed to answer my question. ):
I just got a new MBP 15". This is my first MacBook, and so far I'm incredibly disappointed. Not to troll you guys of course, the reason I signed up here is maybe your expertise could help me as every time I call Apple about literally any issue they just say "We don't know what is wrong."
Every time. ****.

I'm actually fairly surprised about this given that I had a Hackintosh desktop for 2 years and it worked flawlessly even through several hardware upgrades and 2 OS upgrades (Leopard -> SL -> Lion) - what could possibly go wrong?

Well everything. I get 4-7 kernel panics a day at school due to a bug in the WiFi driver. Calling Apple I get "We dunno what's wrong, cya". The Windows support is poor, the computer runs ferociously hot and noises a ton - it's heavy weighing in at almost 3.7kg, which is ridiculous - and the graphics card is underclocked. It's so far underclocked that I get poorer performance than a 3 year old Linux laptop with ATi, no less. It had a 4650. This is 2 GPU generations ago and a slower model (This has 6770) and yet it still, somehow, runs hot and slower!

Not giving up yet though... with a little bit of tweaking it could probably improve...

Thanks for listenin'!

 

[johnhurley]

I get 4-7 kernel panics a day at school due to a bug in the WiFi driver.

Have you tried taking in into an apple store and working with a genius to look at the kernel panics?

No wifi issues with my macbook air running 10.7.2 have you applied all the available os updates? Make sure you have a good backup strategy in place obviously!

 

[dmccloud]

Hey MacRumors!,

The issue:
The Boot Camp graphics drivers are bad at best, broken at worst. They run games really poorly and lag around a lot. This is because they are from 4/1/11, which is now more than a year old. They haven't been updated to properly support newer games, and these games break. I tried to update the drivers but AMD's driver package contends I do not have an AMD card, but I have a MacBook Pro Ultimo 15" so that's obviously not true.

How do I upgrade my driver stack to something that isn't more than a year old?

The story (for those who care, ignore if you don't - it's not needed to answer my question. ):
I just got a new MBP 15". This is my first MacBook, and so far I'm incredibly disappointed. Not to troll you guys of course, the reason I signed up here is maybe your expertise could help me as every time I call Apple about literally any issue they just say "We don't know what is wrong."
Every time. ****.

I'm actually fairly surprised about this given that I had a Hackintosh desktop for 2 years and it worked flawlessly even through several hardware upgrades and 2 OS upgrades (Leopard -> SL -> Lion) - what could possibly go wrong?

Well everything. I get 4-7 kernel panics a day at school due to a bug in the WiFi driver. Calling Apple I get "We dunno what's wrong, cya". The Windows support is poor, the computer runs ferociously hot and noises a ton - it's heavy weighing in at almost 3.7kg, which is ridiculous - and the graphics card is underclocked. It's so far underclocked that I get poorer performance than a 3 year old Linux laptop with ATi, no less. It had a 4650. This is 2 GPU generations ago and a slower model (This has 6770) and yet it still, somehow, runs hot and slower!

Not giving up yet though... with a little bit of tweaking it could probably improve...

Thanks for listenin'!

There is actually an easy way to upgrade from the Boot Camp drivers to the actual ATI drivers.

1. Download both the most recent AMD drivers for desktop not the mobility drivers from the AMD website.

2. Download Driver Sweeper from guru3d.com

3. Uninstall the existing AMD drivers, then run Driver Sweeper to remove any remaining traces of the old drivers.

4. Install the new ATI drivers and reboot.

This is what I did on my 15" MBP, and I can run SW:TOR maxed out without any issues at all. This method also gives you the Catalyst Control Center, which the Boot Camp drivers do not include.

 

[miniConvert]

I get 4-7 kernel panics a day

There's no way that's right. Sometimes you have to be persistent, as with anything, but you need to keep on at Apple until that gets resolved.

 

[Ishayu]

There is actually an easy way to upgrade from the Boot Camp drivers to the actual ATI drivers.

1. Download both the most recent AMD drivers for desktop not the mobility drivers from the AMD website.

2. Download Driver Sweeper from guru3d.com

3. Uninstall the existing AMD drivers, then run Driver Sweeper to remove any remaining traces of the old drivers.

4. Install the new ATI drivers and reboot.

This is what I did on my 15" MBP, and I can run SW:TOR maxed out without any issues at all. This method also gives you the Catalyst Control Center, which the Boot Camp drivers do not include.

THANK YOU!

Who would have thought you needed the desktop rather than the mobility drivers.

Weird...

As for the kernel panics:
It is right. I contacted Apple over the phone and spoke to one of their engineers and we spoke about the error. It happens when an error occurs in the network sending me a package that is one bit too long, so when OS X asks about the length of the next buffer coming in over the network it gets -2.

Inside mbuf.h is a function that checks the lengths of these buffers and if any one of them is smaller than 0 (some other checks are made too) it calls the panic function - so there. There is a bug in our school network causing this to happen obviously but it's ridiculous that it crashes the mac. Utterly ridiculous.

On our school we set up Wireshark and caught the package floating to my machine as it crashed, and we've managed to create a package which, if sent to all IP addresses in 192.168.***.*** we crash every single Lion install on the entire school campus. xD

We've tried reporting it to Apple but they have their head stuck so far up their own behinds that they won't listen. They want DTU's network configuration, but DTU (the school) doesn't want to hand it over. We've tried reporting it to DTU but they say their network works fine and it's up to Apple. So yay.

I've been given permission to return the Mac (and get the money back) at any time I wish as long as the bug isn't fixed - but I want a mac!

What we're thinking about right now is copying in a .kext from Snow Leopard. Could you guys tell me which .kext we're dealing with for the Broadcom Wi-Fi? I know we're on the Windows forum and I planned a separate thread for this but hey... people in here seem eager to help, so that's awesome!

 

[Ishayu]

Nahh, that proceedure didn't work. I still can't update the graphics. When I try to install after doing as you told me to I just get even more problems. It worked before rebooting, then it broke horribly. I simply CANNOT update the drivers and the only way to get the graphics even working again was to consult the mighty overlords and reinstall Boot Camp.

It's a COMPLETELY NORMAL GPU. How on Earth has Apple managed to cripple Windows like this, it's absolutely bananas!

I'm gonna call them again tomorrow, and if they shove that same stupid reply into my face again (aka "we don't know") I'm going to shove their stupid computer into their face.

 

[parapup]

I'm gonna call them again tomorrow, and if they shove that same stupid reply into my face again (aka "we don't know") I'm going to shove their stupid computer into their face.

I wish you get your problem resolved but sad reality is that Apple's Windows support is piss poor and we need more people yelling and returning laptops to Apple until they fix the crap that is Boot Camp. (Oh and Apple - do *something* about the reported bugs - I assure you it will only do good.)

 

[Ishayu]

Guess what?

Nahh, I don't really need to tell you, do I?

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Guess what?

Nahh, I don't really need to tell you, do I?

I don't wanna know

Actually, I came to say that I would never buy an Apple product with the desire to run Windows. I have a late 2006 MBP, and I'm still waiting for a non-buggy keyboard driver.

 

[Ishayu]

I don't wanna know

Actually, I came to say that I would never buy an Apple product with the desire to run Windows. I have a late 2006 MBP, and I'm still waiting for a non-buggy keyboard driver.

My intention with buying a Mac computer was good performance for numerical computations for my school projects coupled with great gaming performance and a decent battery life.

I got all of that, but it's not of much help when the gaming performance is screwed over by what is mildly put substandard Windows performance. A ****ing $500 laptop from the local grocery store would do better than that heap of ****.

It's too bad I specialized my education in numerical computations and mathematics rather than software development and hacking (which was my second priority)

Oh well! I can still do the latter. This laptop's gonna go through purgatory before I'm done with it. (I'm atheist... you know what I mean... shrug)

 

[Wang Foolio]

I have the most recent Catalyst "performance" driver running on my iMac and it fixed the issues I was having with SWTOR (in XP). This is one of those unsupported versions, but it worked for me better than the official Bootcamp drivers (which as you say are showing their age).

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst1111aperformance.aspx

I installed Lion over the weekend and will be looking at possibly installing Win7 Professional tonight... but I'm a bit nervous about messing with something that works fairly well at the moment. Fingers crossed

 

[Ishayu]

I've found the correct answer by getting my request answered on the official Apple community. In my own words the procedure is:

1) Uninstall the Boot Camp driver. Remember to check the tickbox called "Remove related drivers from the system" so it cannot reinstall upon rebooting. Reboot.

2) You are now running a generic graphics adapter, and you no longer have 3D acceleration. Download the 12.1 prerelease drivers from AMD. Run them, but do not install. (It won't work)

3) Go into Device Manager, click on the generic graphic adapter, and click on Update Driver in Properties. It will ask where to search. Point it to C:/AMD/

Wait for the driver to install, then reboot.

4) Install the driver file you originally downloaded, this time going through the entire proceedure.

I am now at 12.1 preview, fully working. With CCC.

Thank you guys! <3

 

[JronMasteR]

I always get the drivers from here:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/mobil...-drivers-notebook-computers-13-12-2011-a.html

I never had to use DriverSweeper to remove the current drivers. Just run the .exe file and it should work.

Regards