Upgrading my I8200's video card to Quadro4 700 Go GL from M9000

[Darmdorf]

Hmmmm......sounds like you've been having delightful times with the new Quadro.

Just a few tips with the driver installation: I'll bet you're not cleaning out things properly during installation.

Try looking at my post at the end of this thread.

[cyclone93]

why do people meddle with laptops, oh why?? most times it doesnt do much good. now i suggest you download 169.09 or 169.04 driver with modded inf for your quaddro., its in the 8 series yes?

[Guest kitskid]

hi all,

i'm very excited to see people still using their i8200s. i have two, and my main one just suffered the same failure on its ATI M9000 card as the OP's. tried the "stick something under the board to apply pressure" hack but that didn't work for me so i've pulled in the Geforce4 440 Go card from my other i8200 but i'm finding that the 2D performance in Linux is miserable compared to the ATI card.

my question is, does anybody have any experience comparing the Quadro4 700 to the M9000 in Linux? i want to buy a replacement card and like the OP debating whether to replace the M9000 or try to get a Quadro4. i've read that Nvidia 2D performance is generally bad and they put all their effort into 3D but i'm not sure if that is specifically with the Geforce4 440, or with all their cards.

appreciate any suggestions if there are Linux users out there who have tried both cards.

thanks!

kk

[Michael Marley]

In my experience, the older nvidia cards (6x00 and below) tend to have good 2D performance, where the newer cards (8x00 and up) tend to have poor 2D performance. (I have never tried a 7x00 card with Linux.)

[StealthCamo]

Sorry for the huge bump, but as the original creator of this thread, I thought I'd update it one last time to give my experiences with the Quadro4 700 Go GL.

First off, Darmdorf: I tried your driver cleaning solution, and it made no difference, unfortunately. cyclone93: I may have tried your driver suggestion, but as it's been so long since I last replied I can't remember. All I know is no desktop drivers have worked for me. kitskid: I've never used Linux, so I can't comment on that.

I've come to the conclusion that my problems stem from the monitor built into my Inspiron 8200. There's no other explanation for nVidia desktop drivers to work when displayed on an external monitor but not on the laptop's screen itself. I've tried the N.E.R.D. program that supposedly tells you what your monitor make is, but it just says "Default Monitor" or whatever for mine, so I have no idea what brand my display is. What I'm having to do is keep the Dell Quadro drivers installed for normal use, and install the desktop drivers coupled with an external monitor for when I want some nice game performance, revert back to the Dell drivers to make it portable again, repeat. I mostly keep the sh*tty Dell drivers installed, cause it's too much of a pain in the butt to install/uninstall drivers over and over again...which is a shame cause I'm not getting my full money's worth with this card. This doesn't really bother me that much any more cause I plan on getting a new laptop sometime soon (once I get enough money!), as this 7 year old laptop is really showing it's age (I've had to replace the fans already, and the replacement set is already starting to make some grinding noises :) ).

I guess I'll go ahead and answer some of my own inquiries from earlier in this thread:

Using Dell's drivers...

- Some Half-Life 2 mods are unplayable. There's apparently some driver display issues going on that won't even let me see the menu screen. HL2 itself (from what I remember) didn't have great performance, so I don't play that any more.

- I used to be able to play Half-Life 1 mods smooth as silk at 1600x1200 on my M9000 card (with it's desktop Catalyst drivers), but now they stutter and become very choppy when the screen is loaded with enemies/players, which sucks.

- Doom 3: I haven't tried this, as I assume the performance won't be great either.

- Guild Wars is pretty much the only game I play on my 8200 since I've made the video card switch, as it has decent performance at 800x600 resolution.

- The only other game I've played is Diablo II, which runs fine.

With the desktop drivers installed and displaying on an external monitor...

- I'm able to play Guild Wars at 1280x768 (I think that's right...or maybe it's 1280x960...my external monitor is widescreen) with comparable performance to Dell's 800x600 resolution, which tells you a lot about the difference desktop drivers make.

- I've not tried HL2 or D3 with them, mostly because I'm so used to just not playing them at all that I've not even thought about trying! (I think I'll do that though at some point now that I thought about it!)

I know my laptop is 7 years old and way out of date, but I hope this post (and my thread) can still help the few out there that still use I8200s. I also want to say "thank you" to all who replied, as your input was a big help and greatly appreciated. If anyone has any questions about this, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.

Peace.

[Keef]

WHEN I WROTE THIS I WAS RUNNING XP SP3. I'm Now Using WIN 7

Hi, to further ressurect this post I'm using a precision M50 and quadro4 700 go gl with the problematic sec**** screen.

82.10 inf did not work for me in any form. By trial and error I am running 94.22 with fair performance using the usual modded inf with no tweaks for this inf.

93.71 and 93.81 work with the usual modded inf with good results.

Currently, I am again by trial and error testing drivers in the 100's but almost invariably these are causing BSOD with an irq related error usually this error is thrown up by bad memory or graphics drivers. my memory is fine and tested as such by memtest and by the fact that only the later drivers so far appear to cause this problem.

I have found the forums particularly hard to navigate in search of a definitive solution for the quadro4 700 go gl/sec*** screen problem. I realise bumping is not the usual manner of requesting help but I feel this posting has a lot of the relevant information in it.

So, is there a fairly current inf tweak out there wich prevents the quarter inch band of distorted colour on start up/bsod or driver not loading?

Or is there a fairly recent driver and inf that could be suggested that might work with my hardware?

Thanks again

Keef

To add I have been having problems with the search function on the forum returning no results for certain search terms. Perhaps this is intentional filtering..but i found that typing 'Quadro4' returned zero results.

I found the post regarding 95.97 and the specific inf for "quadro 700 go gl" and this driver works beautifully with a marked improvement. I am very greatful for the hard work put in by others.

I would still like to know which lines in the inf are specific to to the screen problems and know how to use the information in the earlier inf's with the later drivers and their respective inf's.

If anybody could help me I would be glad to put some time and effort into udating these inf's, I admit I am green to this but I am recently qualified as a Telecomms Engineer so I could turn my hand to it with some guidance.

Edited March 4, 2011 by Keef

[Keef]

I reflashed the EDID

My link

solved sec3255 as far as the quarter inch line is concerned by correcting the EDID entry in hardware.

Edited June 3, 2011 by Keef

[Keef]

Ok I've Solved this bugger once and for all I've added to my previous posts and also provided a working EDID file. Its recognised by the Bios and works as far as i can tell right through from the 40's to the 90's drivers. I experimenting further see my other posts.

Perhaps you could merge my work with this topic... Moderators?

the link in the previous post is still good

Edited September 7, 2010 by Keef