When, oh when, will better GMA 3600 drivers be released?

[KHans13]

I recently bought a refurbished Atom N2600 netbook for playing retro games on the go. I was disappointed to find that the GMA 3600 graphics couldn't give me playable framerates in Motocross Madness 2 and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D. Furthermore, AssaultCube, one of my favorite shooters, crashes evey time I try to play it. (AssaultCube Reloaded does the same thing, unsurprisingly) I've heard somewhere in the Intel community that drivers are coming, but I have to ask: when?

[KHans13]

I'm glad to see Gateway cares at least a little bit about its products. I went to the LT40 download page the other day and found, to my surprise, a BIOS update just begging to be installed. Not sure what it improves, but at least it's there. Wouldn't it be great if the same thing happened for the graphics drivers?

...

Like that's ever gonna happen.

On the other hand, Realtek has been releasing driver updates for who-knows-how-long for its onboard audio, none of which appear on Gateway's website.

[idata]

Hey. I tried to merge original windows 7 setup drivers for intel 3600 with the setup drivers for the samsung slate for windows 8. But i havn't tested it yet because i have no netbook in hand. (It was my client who asked my help but i cant meet her until next week.) Would you mind if you try this? thank youhttp://www.mediafire.com/?4j1eeobwe8i1obo Intel_9.14.3.1087.rar

[KHans13]

I installed your driver through Device Manager and rebooted. I found that the GMA 3600 had disabled itself (because it was having problems, Device Manager said). Everything was being run from the CPU, so the vast majority of the games I have ran at about .5 fps. On the bright side, AssaultCube and AssaultCube Reloaded managed to start and render a scene, but it's extremely far from playable. Apps that are completely rendered in software, like the downloadable version of Need for Madness or the original SimCity, ran only slightly slower. I was stuck with only 800x600 and 1024x600 resolutions with no control for screen brightness. I hate to say it, but they don't work for me. Sorry!

[idata]

:c Who knows when were going to get good drivers. Even the 9xxSSF Intel graphics modding community wont help us; not enough people either own the GMA3600 or make enough commotion about the poor drivers provided. My little Acer Aspire One D270 is unfortunately stuck with a GMA3600 that HAS potential, but no good drivers.

[KHans13]

I hear you. In regard to the 'potential' of the GMA 3600 chip, I believe Nexuiz (and maybe Xonotic) is the best example of what a Cedar Trail netbook is capable of. I can turn up model and texture detail to their highest settings and play at native resolution, 1024x600. I get framerates around 35-45 fps, but there are momentary pauses from time to time. Whether this is the fault of the graphics or something else, I don't know, but I do know we should have better than what we do now. I get about 1-2 fps in Cave Story. It's a 2D game with no sprite filtering! This is ridiculous, and that's not to mention all the rendering corruption that exists in older D3D games, which netbook users should be playing anyway. In Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament, and Nerf Arena Blast (all use the same engine), I have been forced to use the software renderer. Glide wrappers crash the games, and the D3D mode adds tons of junk polygons to any 3D scene. In other games, like Motocross Madness 2, I have to play with all settings at their lowest (except resolution), and even then they doesn't run smoothly enough. That's not to mention the texture/polygon morphing that plagues this and other D3D games. This is unacceptable. Does Intel want netbooks to die?

[idata]

The driver issue suggests they are not excited about GMA3600.

I am still wondering why their literature says the Atom N2600 can only address 2 GB RAM, when I have my little D270 and its N2600 equipped with 4 GB (2.99 usable w/32 bit Win 7).

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement by Intel of that CPU's true capabilities.

[idata]

Woah, same here. I got an Aspire One D270 for christmas and popped a 4gb module in. I then installed windows 7 HP 32-bit and it shows as 2.99GB usable, 4GB installed. Offtopic, woops. Anywaqys, I find in minecraft its actually close to playable, but sooo many glitches... like the rendered background in the main menu is sideways, and spazzes out. Half life 2, settings all turned down it has a decent frame rate...but the bottom of the screen flickers and spazzes out sometimes. Im getting desperate here. PowerVR chips arent bad, i mean being very flexible and have a little tiny bit of beef on them, such as full DX10.1 and 40 Million triangles / second (for the SGX545, also known as GMA3600). Minecraft, yeah I kinda understand the poor frame rates. Half life 2 is very well optimized. In DX7.0, with EVERYTHING including the resolution down at bare bones, it shouldnt be running as low as 10-20 fps at best.

[KHans13]

"Anyways, I find in minecraft its actually close to playable, but sooo many glitches..."

THIS.

I've also noticed that the character's hand/arm is either black or has very dim textures, depending on the lighting. The same applies for creatures, which can also be translucent. I haven't played HL2, but I've played many, many other games, such as Doom 3 and Tribes Vengeance, that should be much more than fluid on the minimum settings, but are not. Heck, I expect 'sort of playable' performance out of Team Fortress 2 and Supreme Commander 1/2 (I haven't tried those last two). Something tells me I'm going to end up shelling out several hundred more dollars to get a next-gen netbook, because the Cedar Trail situation will never improve.

[idata]

> Woah, same here. I got an Aspire One D270 for christmas and popped a 4gb module in. I then installed windows 7 HP 32-bit and it shows as 2.99GB usable, 4GB installed.

I received a somewhat cryptic reply from Intel about this in the Intel support community at /thread/33466 http://communities.intel.com/thread/33466

---------------------

Correct Answer by Intel_Karla on Dec 14, 2012 7:30 AM

Hello scotsilv,

The memory compatibility is determined by the processor's design; this does not mean that because of an issue during the manufacturing process, the processor is limited to a specific maximum memory amount value; the main reason of why the limitation, is merely marketing decisions in order to cover the different market segments.

Furthermore, processors that come installed on mobile systems, such as laptops, notebooks, etc… are tray units. These processors are sold to the different system builders, for them to be able to customize the processor as they wish for them to be able to integrate it on the system they have designed. Due to this, the specifications of the processor might vary from vendor to vendor.

From our side, the specifications publicly available correspond to the manufacturing design. If the processor from your system was not customized to support 4GB in total, the system might be able to work; in the mid time, the processor will be forced to run at higher specifications for it to keep up with the memory settings. This can provoke an unstable environment (system hangs, blue screens, restarts, etc) or even a processor failure in the future.

You can always check and confirm the manufacturing specifications at the processor data sheets, page 10: http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819 http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819

Our best recommendation at this point, would be confirming memory compatibility with your system builder.

---------------------

My D270 has been reliable with a 4 GB module, passed several runs of Windows memory tests, and the CPU runs cool according to SIW etc.

The claim of a 2 GB N2600 limit is, thus, mysterious. I wish an actual digital design engineer who designed the chip could chime in -- but that's probably asking too much.

[KHans13]

Does anyone know what happened to the Atom N2650 and N2850? I don't imagine they'll be released because of the driver issue, but it's nice to think that there'd be a mobile Atom processor that can play Skyrim on paper.

[powerarmour]

Kory Hansen wrote:

Does anyone know what happened to the Atom N2650 and N2850? I don't imagine they'll be released because of the driver issue, but it's nice to think that there'd be a mobile Atom processor that can play Skyrim on paper.

Highly doubtful I'm afraid, and an Atom playing Skyrim is about as likely as a new Cedar Trail driver, it's just not going to happen...

[idata]

Dear community,

Here is another post, please check it out, I guess the more that is going on about this topic, the better the chance that they actually will start doing something for us...

[idata]

Acer Aspire One D270 Intel GMA 3600 driver

Intel, do the right thing and deliver proper software for your processors!

[KHans13]

There's hope! I saw a video on YouTube of someone playing Unreal Tournament (with DirectX rendering!) on an Acer Aspire One D270. His game worked perfectly. Since Acer owns Gateway, and all BIOS and driver updates (other than for the GMA) for the D270 and my LT4004u are identical, I'm hoping I can install the newer Acer driver and at least get a small improvement.

[powerarmour]

Kory Hansen wrote:

There's hope! I saw a video on YouTube of someone playing Unreal Tournament (with DirectX rendering!) on an Acer Aspire One D270. His game worked perfectly.

Perfectly at 20fps or so!, not exactly stellar performance for a 13 year old game...

DirectX just isn't what this GPU is built for unfortunately, the Windows drivers have proved this...

[KHans13]

After installing the 1075 driver, Unreal Tournament's D3D mode worked. Very slowly. OpenGL 2.0 shading in Nexuiz quit functioning, and Xonotic failed to start at all. I switched back to 1065, installed a third-party OGL renderer, and fragged away. It's very smooth and fluid at native resolution with all eye candy on, something the software renderer and D3D mode couldn't do.

It's sad that we need so many workarounds to make retro games work.

[DArce]

Hello all,

We are aware of this situation however there are no plans to release a Microsoft* Windows* 8 driver for this video controller.

We suggest that you use the operating system that came originally in your Original Equipment Manufacturer Computer and use the drivers provided by the OEM.

[KHans13]

I installed the new 1089 driver on my netbook, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that DirectX performance is much better for D3D 9 games. No graphical glitches have been fixed, and 2D performance is still atrocious, but at least Doom 3, Halo, Warcraft 3, and many other games are much more playable. It's nice to see either Intel or Motion Computing is doing something.

[idata]

Hi Kory,

Where did you get this new 1089 driver? is it for win7 or win8?

[idata]

Hi Kory,

Where did you get this new 1089 driver? Is it for win7 or win8? Is it generic for any pc/tablet with atom2600?

[KHans13]

http://www.motioncomputing.com/drivers/CL910/CL910_Graphics_v8.14.8.1089_RN.htm Release Notes

I got it from the above site. It's for Win7, but not Win8 officially. It's not a generic driver, so you can't use setup.exe to install the driver. You have to install the driver manually from Device Manager. I haven't encountered any problems with the driver (except low framerates in Midtown Madness 2, but 1083 caused those too), and much increased performance AND compatibility. TORCS and Unreal Engine 1 games in DX mode now run without the horrid rendering corruption, but both are quite choppy. Still, it's a big improvement, especially for D3D 9+ apps.

Has anyone tried the 1089 driver with Win8?