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Vista install ..x1900 driver no go

A

arythmic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
So I installed Vista Ultimate 32bit last night but can't get the drivers to work for ATI radeon 1900. I went to the ATI site, downloaded the drivers for the card in Vista 32 but when I restart it says drivers arent installed ...

Any ideas ?
thanks
 
The drivers on ATI's site aren't for the Mac Edition of the card. Furthermore, you don't say which environment you're running in. Parallels and VMware should include a driver in their Tools package, and Boot Camp doesn't support Vista yet.
 
Essentially I just put a new HD drive in and installed to that ...

So no parrallels ...
Hmmm, so am I out of luck ?
 
Bill Gates said:
Where'd you hear that? You can install it with much less than that, probably less than 512MB.
Click to expand...

that's what i read about putting vista on a mac pro. the mac pro even comes with 1GB at least anyways.....it says you don't have enough resources for the video card to work without 2GB or ram or more
 
twoodcc said:
that's what i read about putting vista on a mac pro. it says you don't have enough resources for the video card to work without 2GB or ram or more
Click to expand...
Really? Where'd you hear that? That doesn't make much sense to me. Would that be a requirement of any other PC with the X1900 XT too?

I'm beginning to feel like the only one here that had no problems with X1900 XT drivers with a untouched default install of Vista (no Boot Camp drivers). 😱
 
apfhex said:
Really? Where'd you hear that? That doesn't make much sense to me. Would that be a requirement of any other PC with the X1900 XT too?

I'm beginning to feel like the only one here that had no problems with X1900 XT drivers with a untouched default install of Vista (no Boot Camp drivers). 😱
Click to expand...

i think i read it in the mac pro forums. it's not really a requirement, it just doesn't work with 1Gb of ram. you have 2Gb i believe, so it works for you.

btw, could you help me out? everytime i try to install xp, it says it needs to write startup files on another hard drive, but it can't, so it won't install. i can't figure out what i'm doing wrong
 
arythmic said:
Really ?
2 gigs ?

hmmmm ... can anyone confirm this. I do need to get more RAM anyway
Click to expand...

this is correct. You need more than 1gb of ram for the ATI 1900XT to work in Vista (actually for any vid card to work). I confirmed it last night after dropping another 2gb of ram into my macpro after vista had a resource conflict on my 1gb macpro.

Now vista works with no issues. One thing I noticed is the bootcamp drivers don't fully install, so it doesn't allow you to switch "gracefully" between vista and OSX. need to figure that one out! Anyone have any idea's on that? switching back to OSX nicely 🙂 instead of dusting off the install DVD. also doesn't appear to detect bluetooth either so my keyboard isn't working either


MrJynx
 
Mrjynx said:
this is correct. You need more than 1gb of ram for the ATI 1900XT to work in Vista (actually for any vid card to work). I confirmed it last night after dropping another 2gb of ram into my macpro after vista had a resource conflict on my 1gb macpro.

Now vista works with no issues. One thing I noticed is the bootcamp drivers don't fully install, so it doesn't allow you to switch "gracefully" between vista and OSX. need to figure that one out! Anyone have any idea's on that? switching back to OSX nicely 🙂 instead of dusting off the install DVD. also doesn't appear to detect bluetooth either so my keyboard isn't working either


MrJynx
Click to expand...

thanks, maybe they'll believe me now
 
Mrjynx said:
this is correct. You need more than 1gb of ram for the ATI 1900XT to work in Vista (actually for any vid card to work). I confirmed it last night after dropping another 2gb of ram into my macpro after vista had a resource conflict on my 1gb macpro.
Click to expand...
I'm still like to hear why more than 1GB RAM is required for the video card to work, and what types of systems it affects. Seems to me this would be a pretty MAJOR issue for people wanting to upgrade to Vista (not that they shouldn't get more RAM anyway 😛 ).

One thing I noticed is the bootcamp drivers don't fully install, so it doesn't allow you to switch "gracefully" between vista and OSX. need to figure that one out! Anyone have any idea's on that?
Click to expand...
Um. Hold down Option at startup? 😕 Or does your bluetooth keyboard not work at that point?
 
apfhex said:
I'm still like to hear why more than 1GB RAM is required for the video card to work, and what types of systems it affects. Seems to me this would be a pretty MAJOR issue for people wanting to upgrade to Vista (not that they shouldn't get more RAM anyway 😛 ).
Click to expand...

i think this only applies to people with a mac pro....and most need to have at least 2GB in there anyways....
 
apfhex said:
I'm still like to hear why more than 1GB RAM is required for the video card to work, and what types of systems it affects. Seems to me this would be a pretty MAJOR issue for people wanting to upgrade to Vista (not that they shouldn't get more RAM anyway 😛 ).
QUOTE]

Well I don't believe it's an issue with the video card. This is just an educated guess, but I'd say that it has to do with the new memory management/performance features incorporated into Vista. Check out some articles on Windows SuperFetch such as the following:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/superfetch.mspx

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=4

Basically once started (and unlike other systems) Vista via this technology consumes all of your physical memory installed. By that I mean none shows as free regardless of how much RAM you have installed. If it's not actively in use, it's cached and preloaded with the applications that it expects that you're most likely to use. Once this gets good at what those applications are, the apps load much faster as their data is now stored on cached physical RAM as opposed to being read from the HD. I suspect that on a system with 4 cores, 1GB is not sufficient in Vista's implementation of it's memory management and thus you get the errors that you do, but they go away once you get to a larger installed RAM size. Again just my suspicion.

As a matter of reference as I write this from my MacBook with 1.5GB installed, Task Manager reports that I have the following:

1.5GB Total Physical Ram
1GB Cached
0 Ram Free

Same thing happens with my Mac Pro which has 2GB. Not what you used to see with XP, but this is one of Vista's new performance features.

~shoe
Click to expand...
 
apfhex said:
I'm still like to hear why more than 1GB RAM is required for the video card to work, and what types of systems it affects. Seems to me this would be a pretty MAJOR issue for people wanting to upgrade to Vista (not that they shouldn't get more RAM anyway 😛 ).


Um. Hold down Option at startup? 😕 Or does your bluetooth keyboard not work at that point?
Click to expand...


i'm not seeing the bluetooth controller in the device manager, and the 2 devices that aren't detecting properly don't appear to be the controller either because when I attempt to manually install it vista comes back stating its not the correct driver.

I will try and hold option at startup 🙂 never knew about that one, thought I had to switch the OS's by using the startup disk program that's in windows and also in system preferences under OSX.

as for the 1gb thing, i'm not completely sure why it did what it did, but it worked fine once I installed an additional 2gb of ram on my Macpro. I should of upgraded a long time ago but I was lazy 🙂 I wish I knew why the vid card wasn't working because to me it still doesn't really make sense. oh well, i'm happy it works now.
 
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