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 rather fond of my LT4004u, for anything that doesn't use the GPU. The CPU portion performs admirably, especially in Dolphin (the emulator). I can imagine the SSD would make it uber-fast. As for the 4 GB of RAM, I thought the memory controller in the N2600 only supports 2 GB of RAM at 800 MHz. Can anyone verify this? The ARK agrees...

[idata]

Re: 4GB of RAM

My system has no problems with a single 4GB stick. On Win7 Starter, it came up as 2GB (limitations of the OS), under Win7 64bit it was 3.X GB (don't do 64bit though, no graphics drivers for the GMA3600 yet / very unstable). Win7 Pro 32bit shows 3.X GB and runs fine for the most part. If you'd like, I'll get some cpu-z info posted or something.

CPU wise, writing my own game / code, I had to do some serious optimization to make it happy on the N2600. But now that's done, it seems quite content.

There are youtube videos for changing the RAM and HD. Be careful when removing the keyboard, it's support is a very thin sheet of metal which might be easy to kink if ya get too violent with it. The keyboard sits in a tray that has it's own "cup" / "ridge" / "lip", so when getting the retention nubs out of the way, keep an eye out for that.

SSD has probably helped alot. Booting is pretty quick as expected. When the progress "bar" / "slider" / night-rider thing pops up on the Win7 start screen (pulsing left to right whatever repeatedly), it only gets to the half way point on the first pass and then brings me to the log in screen. I picked up an older Intel 160GB SSD for around $80 btw.

[KHans13]

I've probably watched the same video you have. I'm running happily on 2 GB of G.Skill RAM right now.

Does anyone know what improvements the 1083 driver carries over the 1065 driver? I really want to know if I can get any performance boost by manually installing them. I'm fed up with this piece o' junk software.

[powerarmour]

There is hardly any noticeable differences between 1065 and 1083 really, not in terms of any 3D performance I don't think.

The 108x drivers did solve some OpenGL glitches that were present in the 107x drivers, but that's all I could tell seeing as we don't even get a changelog with these drivers anymore!

Btw, I don't think the SGX545 is performing that great for new Clover Trail tablets under Windows 8 at the moment either :-

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=34091404 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=34091404

So chances are we may get a driver, but don't expect a lot from it unfortunately...

[KHans13]

I run a few OGL apps, but not enough that hurting D3D apps would be worth it. OGL games perform admirably as it is, much better than the majority of D3D games I have installed.

I'm really beginning to think Intel is to blame for the decline of netbooks. Between the 1st two GMA incarnations lacking any hardware vertex processing and these broken drivers, the netbook has never been whole, IMO. Maybe Cedar Trail's successor will finally give netbooks decent performance (and DX 11), but I'm expecting another wave of broken promises.

[powerarmour]

Kory Hansen wrote:

I'm really beginning to think Intel is to blame for the decline of netbooks. Between the 1st two GMA incarnations lacking any hardware vertex processing and these broken drivers, the netbook has never been whole, IMO. Maybe Cedar Trail's successor will finally give netbooks decent performance (and DX 11), but I'm expecting another wave of broken promises.

Indeed, Valley View should be a lot better performance wise, but I get the feeling it will be too late to the party, ARM will have already ridden off on the tablet/mobile bus honking the horn by then.

In the meantime, anything with a PowerVR series 5 GPU under D3D needs to be avoided like a bad smell I fear.

[KHans13]

ARM will never replace x86, at least for me. There are simply too many Windows-only/legacy apps I rely on for me to use any other platform. Maybe that'll change in the future, but in the foreseeable future, x86 trumps all others.

OGL doesn't fare much better than D3D on the GMA 3600. Glest crashes whenever I select a building, and MegaGlest has either garbled or invisible fonts, so the game's mostly unusable. Freedoom suffers from lag during the "melting screen" transition on PrBoom using the OGL renderer (sure, I don't have to use it, but I appreciate the enhanced draw distance). Still, on apps that actually function, this little chip is impressive compared to the GMA 950 & 3150, like OpenArena and Nexuiz.

[idata]

My Acer AOD270 with the Atom N2600 also has no problem with a 4 Gb memory module. The BIOS sees 4 Gb and with 32 bit Win 7 Home Premium, Windows sees ~ 3 Gb usable as expected.

However, WHY it can do this is a mystery as the Intel specs on the N2600 state it has a 2 Gb RAM limit.

Any ideas why 4 Gb seems to work? Is Intel providing misinformation, or have they dropped the 2 Gb limit of the N2600 in latest steppings?

[powerarmour]

The 2GB limit is BS on Cedar Trail hardware, and if some boards have it (unlikely, but not impossible) then it's merely coded into the BIOS and/or the EM64T disabled on the CPU (though most BIOS updates will re-enable this now).

The real reason is the lack of 64bit GPU drivers, so it's not officially supported. Though I have run 8GB of DDR3 in my ASRock AD2700-ITX for example with no issues whatsoever, there just isn't any 64bit graphics drivers yet on Windows (or Linux) so your stuck with a basic display driver (on the other hand, makes a great little SME Server!)

4GB should work fine on a 32bit system, it'll just generally only see ~3GB of it.

[idata]

The Datasheet for the D2000/N2000 series Atoms (Intel document 326136-003) states:

1.2 System memory features

One channel of DDR3

- Max 2 sodimms per channel for D2000 and N2800, single or double sided SODIMM

- Max 1 sodimm per channel for N2600 series only, single or double sided SODIMM

Is it also possible the 2 GB "limit" for the N2600 was penned before 4 Gb SODIMMs became common?

[powerarmour]

scotsilv wrote:

The Datasheet for the D2000/N2000 series Atoms (Intel document 326136-003) states:

1.2 System memory features

One channel of DDR3

- Max 2 sodimms per channel for D2000 and N2800, single or double sided SODIMM

- Max 1 sodimm per channel for N2600 series only, single or double sided SODIMM

Is it also possible the 2 GB "limit" for the N2600 was penned before 4 Gb SODIMMs became common?

Cedar Trail only supports a single channel of DDR3 memory anyway, I think that's more of an electrical/manufacturing guidline tbh. I think an N2600 should support a 4GB module fine.

[idata]

N2600 indeed does support a 4 Gb module. I have proof in my N2600-based Acer AOD270 upgraded with Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit and a Crucial 4 Gb SODIMM.

It runs flawlessly, with the expected appx. 3 Gb available to Windows in the 32-bit OS.

However even vendors like Crucial list the limit at 2 Gb (e.g., http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Aspire%20One%20D270-1835&Cat=RAM Computer memory upgrades for Acer Aspire One D270-1835 Netbook from Crucial.com )

S.

[idata]

p.s. on page 10 of the same datasheet for the D2000/N2000 series Atoms (Intel document 326136-003, Rev. 003 July 2012, http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/datasheet/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.pdf http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/datasheet/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.pdf) it states the memory limits:

• Max memory size by SKU: N2600 series 2 GB; N2800, D2500 & D2700 series 4 GB

This seems to be causing confusion.

S.

[powerarmour]

scotsilv wrote:

This seems to be causing confusion.

S.

Like I said, it depends on what each board manufacturer chooses to adhere to with their BIOS generally, and how their DIMM slots are configured/routed.

I'd imagine most would work with ≥4GB, but there are probably some N2600 boards that don't.

[idata]

Thanks.

Just to be sure, I ran some rounds of Windows memory diagnostics on my 4 GB-equipped Acer AOD270 N2600.

No problems found.

S.

[KHans13]

I didn't by any means run comprehensive tests of the 1083 driver, but what few improvements there are are more than negated by the drop in performance for some apps (Midtown Madness 2). The only thing that worked correctly was the bloom effect in OpenArena, which I don't use anyway. I decided I'd seen enough after a while and reverted back to 1065. Be honest, Intel, how long must we wait? I don't mind waiting as long as I know when the wait is over.

[idata]

I see we Windows 8 users are also still waiting for something. Of note, Samsung posted drivers for its Atom Z2760 powered Slate 5 today. I am unclear if GMA 3600 or 3650 is running under the hood of that device. I tried to install the driver on a Fujitsu Q552 (which runs Windows 8 metro apps under the standard Microsoft driver, albeit at 1024 x 768 and no sleep mode), but had no luck (could not install on this version of Windows) even with an attempted manual INF installation. The link to the driver is below.

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/XE500T1C-A01US http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/XE500T1C-A01US

Is anyone out there available to tinker with this? Members of Intel, are there any generic drivers for the graphics chips on the Z2760-powered devices out there?

I'm hoping that the other manufacturers will post drivers soon... Especially Dell, given that the Laitude 10 supports the same resolution as the Q552 (1280 x 800). Acer is another thought, given the rumors of the W510 potentially running a GMA 3600-related GPU...

[powerarmour]

Thankyou for the info, the driver looks good and I'd guess that the INF has to be altered slightly by adding the devices from an older INF (I've done this before with the Toshiba .1082 driver)

But yes it looks like we may be in luck

[idata]

Thanks again. I admit I have little-to-no experience with the INF modding whatsoever... I only modded an EMGD 1.0 driver with one extra line to support a Fujitsu UH900 (that was an improved GMA 500 driver, which seems to be better than EMGD 1.8 in Windows 8, in my view).

Here's hoping that this thread will explode again once more Z2760-powered devices have posted drivers...

[MSchm21]

Some possibly working variants from me

; Driver information

;

[Manufacturer]

%KMDName% = KMD.Mfg, NTamd64

[KMD.Mfg]

"Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator"= generic32_VEN_8086&DEV_08CF, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CF&SUBSYS_C0D6144D

[KMD.Mfg.NTamd64]

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE0

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE1

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE2

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE3

Second variant:

; Driver information

;

[Manufacturer]

%Intel% = Intel.Mfg, NTamd64

[Intel.Mfg.NTamd64]

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE0

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE1

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE2

%iPNWD0% = iCNT0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0BE3

[powerarmour]

Thanks, yeah I've tried a few combinations briefly, but the device seems to pick up as "Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator" but default when added by the INF.

Where it's failing for me at the moment is that it's saying "The driver selected for this device does not support this version of Windows" (I'm running the Win8 Enterprise RTM at the moment)

When I've got more time I'll need to play about some more...