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iMAC Radeon HD 5750 (aka Mobility 5850) boot camp driver update question

S

stg87

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 11, 2011
7
0
I recently installed windows 7 proffesional, using boot camp, on my 2010 model - iMAC i7, 8gb ram...which came with an ATI radeon HD 5750 graphics card. I've noticed some tearing among other things while playing some games..such as "rift" on windows. I know that the drivers installed through boot camp are by no means the latest, so I have been considering whether or not to update the drivers directly from the AMD website as a means of improving over all performance(having catalyst control center would be nice aswell) . I know that the card in the iMAC is actually the Mobility 5850 so if i download that one, it should work. My question however is....do I need to uninstall the graphics driver installed by bootcamp before doing so ..and if this is the case ...how would I go about doing so properly. ..Also i know the iMAC is not meant for gaming ..etc etc..still I would like to try and get the most optimal performance out of it as possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, THANKS :)
 
Hey there, I recently purchased my i7 iMac back in December, and I think I can help with your issues.

First off, on your game Rift do you have the graphics settings configured correctly? If you go into the game and choose the graphic settings, look for a "vertical sync" option. What this will do is prevent tearing in your game and render the image at once. The only downside is this basically halves your frame-rate because it buffers the images first. In that case you might want to reduce the resolution from full to maybe 1920x1080 if possible. This does make the image slightly less crisp, but is still very playable.

Secondly, about the driver updates, I've managed to upgrade to the newest driver version (11.3) by downloading the Mobility Radeon HD 5XXX series drivers from here:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx#2

I did have to uninstall the stock Bootcamp driver using Control Panel first, then installed the 11.3 driver and restarted. Everything worked smoothly for me, though I temporarily had to navigate around in 800x600 mode until i could install the new driver.

I hope this helps you with your game. I've been playing Left4Dead 1 & 2, as well as Crysis2, and many other games and they seem a bit snappier. If you really wanna go deeper, you can research over-clocking the GPU. It basically allows you to "unlock" the GPU frequency back to before Apple down-clocked the card. Just a warning though, it's definitely not for beginners, and you have to know what you are doing first. If you are interested there's already an over-clocking forum here for the 27" i7 iMac.
 
Thanks

Thanks for the info :) Definately going to read up on the
Overclocking. Question though, do you remember what the bootcamp
video card driver was called under control panel, can't seem
To find it to uninstall. Also, after uninstalling it, I've always wondered if it
Is necessary to use something like ccleaner
to erase any left over files of the driver.
 
Wow, I'm sorry I misinformed you. I dunno what I meant when I wrote Control Panel, but disregard that. What you really need to do is go to Device Manager and double click Display Adapters, and it should show the Radeon 5750. Then right click that and click Uninstall, and then delete all related files. The LCD will probably go black for a second, and will go to 800x600, then you just run the installer for the new driver (tip, I right clicked the install file and then Run as Administrator). That should get you going for the new driver. You'll also be able to use the Radeon Control Center software that installs with the driver so you can customize advanced settings. Lemme know if you get it figured out, and if you need help with over-clocking.
 
I've always just over written drivers when updating, back when i used PC. Is there a certain program i should use for deleting "related files" when i delete the boot camp vid drivers, or will the files pop up with a simple 'search computer'?
 
You have the 27" imac?

I play rift at 1920x1200 on my i7 PC with 6gb ram and 460gtx and only just get acceptable framerates. The 5750 is a weaker card and coupled with a higher res of a 27" monitor you'll never get great results. Even on the 21" imac you won't be able to run at max settings.
Medium settings maybe, tops.
 
As far as removing old drivers go, I'm not an expert on that. I just know that it runs the current drivers just fine according to the spec page with GPU-Z.

As far as comparing a desktop GPU to a mobile GPU, there's no contest, but I do know that over-clocking can definitely help it reach higher frame-rates. For instance, the 460 GTX you speak of has a 675MHz core clock-speed. The 5750 in the iMac i7 has a 625MHz core clock. With over-clocking you can achieve up to 850MHz, but then you have to bring the memory clock-speeds into the equation and the mobile 5750 gets blown out of the water (3500MHz vs 1000MHz). Numbers aren't everything though, and viewing the game at a lower resolution of 1920x1080 isn't bad on the 27" LCD.
 
Can you link me to forum page with discussion on
Overclocking the iMac?
 
fluffyroo said:
As far as removing old drivers go, I'm not an expert on that. I just know that it runs the current drivers just fine according to the spec page with GPU-Z.

As far as comparing a desktop GPU to a mobile GPU, there's no contest, but I do know that over-clocking can definitely help it reach higher frame-rates. For instance, the 460 GTX you speak of has a 675MHz core clock-speed. The 5750 in the iMac i7 has a 625MHz core clock. With over-clocking you can achieve up to 850MHz, but then you have to bring the memory clock-speeds into the equation and the mobile 5750 gets blown out of the water (3500MHz vs 1000MHz). Numbers aren't everything though, and viewing the game at a lower resolution of 1920x1080 isn't bad on the 27" LCD.
Click to expand...

Clock speed doesn't mean much at all when talking about comparing video cards. There's just way more factors that matter more. Even at a lower rez it's still a pretty weak card. You just aren't going to get much out of it for Rift at native rez or even at 1920x1080.

It can all be subjective though. If I can't play at native rez, max settings and get smooth framerates I would then classify it as unplayable. But others are happy turning settings down to get smooth framerates.

Overclocking an imac just makes me nervous. Due to the form factor and limited cooling i'd worry about burning something out. Never tried it on an imac though.
 
something very odd happened upon trying to download the latest ati driver that you linked me. First i tried simply uninstalling the HD 5750 in device manager ...then installing the new vid driver...and it ran the catalyst installer..which after it finished had done absolutely nothing. Device manager still showed that i had NO graphics card at all, so i restarted. Once logged in, windows searched for drivers and installed "VGA ADAPTER" or something to that affect. Thinking i messed something up i downloaded Driver Cleaner and once again uninstalled driver in device manager...reboot windows in safe mode and deleted all remnants of ATI....and again...same thing occurred when i tried to install the new ATI driver - it did nothing. So long story short i ended up having to download the newest version of boot camp off apple site to even get windows to recognize my graphics card as Radeon HD 5750 again, because for some reason the bootcamp repair utility on mac osx disc did nothing but install the outdated version of bootcamp over and over which still did not correct the display driver issue. Any ideas, why this is happening?
 
archer75 said:
You have the 27" imac?

I play rift at 1920x1200 on my i7 PC with 6gb ram and 460gtx and only just get acceptable framerates. The 5750 is a weaker card and coupled with a higher res of a 27" monitor you'll never get great results. Even on the 21" imac you won't be able to run at max settings.
Medium settings maybe, tops.
Click to expand...

Since I am on the original i5 and only have a 4850 I wonder why you have such an issue? I play at max res 2560x1440 and its fine for me, but it can get stupid if its a fire rift where more than one is on the screen; life and death rifts don't affect me that much.

There is a lighting setting on their advanced panel that if set higher than the fourth notch nukes fps considerably. Check to see what yours is set at.


As for new drivers, just go to the amd site and select Mac from the list. Follow the prompts and everything comes down fine.
 
I don't want to take the thunder away from the original poster as this is his/her thread, however I also have had this issue. I am seeking an answer to the question of how one can uninstall ATI drivers and do a clean install of the latest (11.3) ATI drivers.

I tried doing it how I would on a PC and it resulted in a black screen with a blinking cursor. I tried doing it like was suggested to the OP and met with the same results as the OP, namely that the drivers you download from ATI do not reconize that you have a video card.

Hopefully this is similar to the OP's problem as I do not wish to hijack his thread!

Edit: I have a 27 inch iMac with the i3 intel processor from 2010.
 
Stelaris said:
I don't want to take the thunder away from the original poster as this is his/her thread, however I also have had this issue. I am seeking an answer to the question of how one can uninstall ATI drivers and do a clean install of the latest (11.3) ATI drivers.

I tried doing it how I would on a PC and it resulted in a black screen with a blinking cursor. I tried doing it like was suggested to the OP and met with the same results as the OP, namely that the drivers you download from ATI do not reconize that you have a video card.
Click to expand...

Are you starting from this page when you obtain the drivers?

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

1 = Mac Graphics

2 = Boot Camp

3 = iMac, Mac Pro, or Mac Book Pro

4 = Versions of Windows

It was dead simple. I don't understand the need to do a 'clean install'. I installed over my existing version just fine.
 
I did not choose Mac graphics no. I read that the iMacs graphics card is really a mobility card and to choose that when installing drivers (mobility radeon hd 5xxx). As to why I'd like to do a clean install, I installed some beta drivers as bioware suggested for dragon age 2 and they seemed to do more harm than good.

Otherwise I would simply overwrite the drivers. The drivers, prior to using the beta drivers, worked well. Using those drivers was a mistake and was hoping fixing that mistake would be easy.
 
Well I suggest you download the drivers that the ATI download page suggests. It makes no sense to try to do otherwise when the vendor responsible for them tells you exactly which ones to use.
 
So has anyone successlly installed the mobility hd
5xxx series driver(11.3) or is the iMac bootcamp driver
The only one that works? If you have managed to install mobility drivers, how
Did u do so because I keep trying and installer does nothing
 
I'm really sorry guys, wasn't expecting everyone to have so many problems. I really can't think of anything different I did with my installation. I am using an SSD I installed and purchased the mounting brackets for. Perhaps using the SSD SATA connector has somethin to do with it? I'm going to uninstall the drivers and do a test tonight when I get home.
 
It's about time I joined this forum :)

Really, is it necessary to uninstall old drivers, run driver cleaner etc. You used to do that in the old days of Windows 98 and XP, but isn't it simply go to AMD site, get drivers, run exe.

If the OP ever gets things running again, just download drivers as others as said, and install over top.

As for the screen tearing issues you're seeing, this is normal and has a lot to do with how the game devs have optimised things. Your monitor has a fixed refresh rate (usually 60 fps) but the game engine has it's own refresh rate which varies a great deal depending on complexity of graphics, performance of the hardware etc. Screen tearing happens when the in game fps is out of sync with the monitors fps (e.g. your monitor starts drawing a frame as your game is half-way through drawing one). Usually at high enough frame rates, this tearing is quick enough that you don't notice it.

Some tips to fix it:

- Turn on V-Sync in the game settings, or if not avaibale, try enabling it via your graphics card's control panel. V-Sync will synchonise your game's output to your monitor's, but in order to do this it has to half the game's fps, then half again etc. So if the game can't quite handle 60 fps, it'll half it to 30 fps, then to 15 fps etc. At 15 fps it's sending one game frame to every 4 monitor frames.

- To fix the FPS halfing issue, look for a "Tripple buffering" option in the game (or gfx control panel). This allows the gfx card to buffer more frames so in the 60 fps example, it would drop down to 40fps, then 30, 20, 15, etc. etc. At least I believe that's how it works, someone correct me. V-Sync + tripple buffering is the key here though.

- Try just dropping the detail settings to make the game run faster, especially the resolution. Do you really need to run it native res? Remeber most Xbox360 and PS3 games are only 1280x720 (720p) which is effectively a quarter the number of pixels on a 27" iMac :D

Hope this helps!
 
Solution found!!!

Ok guys, I've found the correct way to install the latest Mobility Catalyst 11.3 Driver (version 8.831.2.0). Here's the steps I took to install said driver:

First go to this link:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

Download the item in the first tab labeled AMD Catalyst Packages, Catalyst Software Suite (should be 1.1MB in size).

Second, install this program!
You'll see a download manager box, and you'll want to click "Start Download". It'll download the latest driver version to your temp folder or wherever you choose. After it's finished downloading, you'll want to click "Install", and from here it's just like a normal Catalyst Driver installation.

Third, Enjoy!
You're now running the latest Catalyst 11.3 Software and if you go to Device Manager and double click your Display Adapters, then on the device labeled "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series" you'll find that you now have an:

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series

Driver Date: 3/8/2011

Driver Version: 8.831.2.0


I hope this helps anyone looking to update their Catalyst drivers on their 2010 i7 27" iMacs with the 5750. If anyone has any questions, I check this forum regularly so don't hesitate to ask!
 
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