ATI Radeon 3200 Graphics Card

[Gold Man]

Hey guys, so today I finally downloaded and installed Blacklight: Retribution. I waited 2 hours for the patch to update, and finally got the chance to play it. After 2 overheats, I realized that the game stated my GPU (which is an AMD Mobility ATI Radeon 3200 HD GPU), and that it was last updated 67 months ago. Ouch. So, I looked to see if there were any updates available for my GPU, and unfortunately the ones I find are ones linked to the Desktop variant, and AMD doesn't even list the 3200 on their website anymore.

Basically, does anyone know where I can find an update for my GPU? I'm beginning to think this might be the ENTIRE reason as to why I overheat so frequently on some games. If it isn't, then my laptop just flatout sucks.

EDIT: And I can't buy a new laptop, don't have the money for it right now...

[{TCE}Call-of-Duty]

HMMMMMMMM... ever thought of buying a new laptop

[tirpider]

Best place I found was the AMD site (link)
They list the Mobility Radeon HD 3xxx Series, but not the 3200 explicitly.
The download I looked at said it was updated around October. That was for Win7 32-bit. Don't know what OS you are looking at though.

-edit
By "list" I mean you have to select the appropriate settings in their form.
I wish sites didn't do stuff like that.

[Gold Man]

Best place I found was the AMD site (link)
They list the Mobility Radeon HD 3xxx Series, but not the 3200 explicitly.
The download I looked at said it was updated around October. That was for Win7 32-bit. Don't know what OS you are looking at though.

Eh, the 3000 series is fine for me. I'm looking for a Vista 64-bit update though.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it for my Vista OS. Will download and install now, I'l get back to you later to see if it's changed my laptop in a positive manner.

EDIT: Well, it's installed, unfortunately I've no game to test it on, since I deleted the Blacklight: Retribution exe already (big mistake, I'l need to wait 2 hours again to install the patch...). I also can't use SWBF/SWBFII, because my parents still need to find where they hid the discs from me. I know Warsow and TrackMania work already, so testing them wouldn't do me any good.

Either way, thanks for finding the update for me, tirpider! Now let's see if it did anything to my PC that will be beneficial at all. Or do drivers not necessarily enhance the performance of an integrated GPU?

[tirpider]

They can. If the drivers have actually been updated.

It's completely possible that they are packaging the same (old) drivers into an updated reference driver package. (they seemed to be happy to announce they were combining all their old driver downloads into that one package.)

You will have to check the date and versions on the drivers page in device manager to be sure.
If that is the case then it will be the same song and dance.

I haven't kept tabs on AMD since their K6-2 days, so I don't know what their reputation for updating drivers is.
I hope it's good.

[Gold Man]

They can. If the drivers have actually been updated.

It's completely possible that they are packaging the same (old) drivers into an updated reference driver package. (they seemed to be happy to announce they were combining all their old driver downloads into that one package.)

You will have to check the date and versions on the drivers page in device manager to be sure.
If that is the case then it will be the same song and dance.

I haven't kept tabs on AMD since their K6-2 days, so I don't know what their reputation for updating drivers is.
I hope it's good.

Well, the update was in October 2013, and it was the latest version there. Plus, my laptop hasn't had any of its drivers updated since 67 months ago, so it should help somewhat.

Anyways, thanks for the help, tirpider!

[{TCE}Call-of-Duty]

A bit of your manhood back:
[spoiler]http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0006TNCHS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1387723322&sr=8-10[/spoiler]

[Gold Man]

Ok, so I re-installed the Blacklight: Retribution exe, and it seems I didn't delete the first one entirely (thank goodness I didn't need to wait 2 hours for the patch!). Anyways, I ran the game, and I got a bit further on the training this time (after putting EVERYTHING on low settings and/or disabled), and my GPU didn't feel hot at all! However my CPU was still hot, and it overheated when I was about to enter the Hardsuit. So now I'm assuming I need to update the drivers on my CPU. I tried looking for it, but I can't seem to find any driver updates for the Turion x2 64.

Can someone please help me find any driver updates for this CPU?

It's an  2.3-GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core ZM-84 processor. (And yes, I copied that name off my computer specs. )

[{TCE}Call-of-Duty]

I don't know any computer stuff like this (or at least until I get to High School next year) but see if theres anything on this,[spoiler] https://www.google.com/search?q=2.3-GHz+AMD+Turion+X2+Ultra+Dual-Core+ZM-84+processor+driver+updates&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb[/spoiler]

[SleepKiller]

I don't think CPUs have drivers... They run everything on your computer, including drivers. How is something going to run it's driver if it needed the driver to work in the first place?

Also why Blacklight? If you want a free FPS that has a fair micro-transaction system look no further than the most popular one on the planet. Team Fortress 2. The best part is just look at it's system requirements

Minimum: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX® 8.1 level Graphics Card (Requires support for SSE), Windows® 7 (32/64-bit)/Vista/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Just try the darn thing for a few hours at least. Also as with any PC game you should do one of two things to get the best FPS out of it. A. Set all settings to highest and turn them down till smooth. B. Set all settings to lowest and turn them up till smooth. (Do the last one, and don't turn them all up at once. One at a time.)

[Gold Man]

I don't think CPUs have drivers... They run everything on your computer, including drivers. How is something going to run it's driver if it needed the driver to work in the first place?

Also why Blacklight? If you want a free FPS that has a fair micro-transaction system look no further than the most popular one on the planet. Team Fortress 2. The best part is just look at it's system requirements

Minimum: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX® 8.1 level Graphics Card (Requires support for SSE), Windows® 7 (32/64-bit)/Vista/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Just try the darn thing for a few hours at least. Also as with any PC game you should do one of two things to get the best FPS out of it. A. Set all settings to highest and turn them down till smooth. B. Set all settings to lowest and turn them up till smooth. (Do the last one, and don't turn them all up at once. One at a time.)

Ah, true...

As for why Blacklight, it just sort of appealed to me. I've thought of Team Fortress, but I'm not too keen on TF2's cartoony feel. I like cartoons and video games, but I generally prefer if they stay separate from one another. No offense, just a personal opinion. I'm actually considering of uninstalling the Blacklight launcher since it doesn't work on my laptop very well.

I'l admit, the requirements do look pretty good, and playable on this thing, but I'm just not interested in it. And I actually played Blacklight with everything disabled and set on low settings. I actually got a bit further, but it's clear that 20 FPS isn't balanced enough for this game to run steady on my laptop.

Anyways, I got my games back (parents finally remembered where they were), so expect me to around on SWBF some more, possibly SWBFII since I updated my Graphics drivers.

[SleepKiller]

All right.

First off, you're judging a game based off it's art style. This is always and I stress always a bad idea. I've done it in the past with games like Orcs Must Die! and boy was I wrong. OMD! has a cartoon art style and this put me off it. But I did buy it and man did I love it. Watch these if you haven't already http://store.steampowered.com/video/440 they give an insight into the game's great sense of humour and how the art style works well with it.

Now the gameplay of TF2 is pretty much the best out of any FPS on the market. The classes are all diverse and there is one to fit anyone's play style. TF2 also has many, many gamemodes CTF, CP, Payload, the co-op MvM and more. All of them are brilliantly designed.

TF2 is requires you to learn completely new shooter skills. This ain't COD or BF. Your skills won't move over well. Each class has their own play style and you'll need to learn all of them. (Watching good players in action helps with this.)  Their are also no direct weapon upgrades only ones for different play styles. 75% of the time stock weapons are regarded as the best ones.

Finally we have hats... Oh hats... I love hats, don't you? Then their are the Unusuals and Festives... Ah it's just so wonderful.

But I'm getting carried away from the point. You're judging something based off pictures and or videos. It's free you have very little excuse not to try it before judging it. Give it a few hours at least and then you may criticise it. Until then your opinion on it is of very little value.

[BlackScorpion]

All right.

First off, you're judging a game based off it's art style. This is always and I stress always a bad idea. I've done it in the past with games like Orcs Must Die! and boy was I wrong. OMD! has a cartoon art style and this put me off it. But I did buy it and man did I love it. Watch these if you haven't already http://store.steampowered.com/video/440 they give an insight into the game's great sense of humour and how the art style works well with it.

Now the gameplay of TF2 is pretty much the best out of any FPS on the market. The classes are all diverse and there is one to fit anyone's play style. TF2 also has many, many gamemodes CTF, CP, Payload, the co-op MvM and more. All of them are brilliantly designed.

TF2 is requires you to learn completely new shooter skills. This ain't COD or BF. Your skills won't move over well. Each class has their own play style and you'll need to learn all of them. (Watching good players in action helps with this.)  Their are also no direct weapon upgrades only ones for different play styles. 75% of the time stock weapons are regarded as the best ones.

Finally we have hats... Oh hats... I love hats, don't you? Then their are the Unusuals and Festives... Ah it's just so wonderful.

But I'm getting carried away from the point. You're judging something based off pictures and or videos. It's free you have very little excuse not to try it before judging it. Give it a few hours at least and then you may criticise it. Until then your opinion on it is of very little value.

TF2 reminds me a lot of Counter Strike, though I don't have too much experience playing TF2 and even less playing CS.

[aeria.]

Counter Strike is a completely different beast compared to TF2. They're both similar engines but gameplay wise they're flat-out different.

[tirpider]

The closest thing to a CPU driver you will find is the drivers for the chipset on the motherboard.
But that won't have anything specific to the CPU.

If that is indeed your performance bottleneck, the only option will be to get a better CPU, which will most likely mean a new motherboard or in the case of a laptop, a new laptop.
(Sometimes there are other options, but if those applied here, this thread wouldn't exist.)
[spoiler]I'm talking about finding a board from a similar model laptop and possibly swapping it out for the old.
This doesn't always work and you usually won't know till you have the wrong pieces in hand and are trying to jam them together anyway cause you just spent way to much money for it not to work, so you finally end up ditching the frame and running the bare pieces out of an old ice chest or something and feel bad about it everytime you turn it on till you shake loose enough cash to buy another machine, promising yourself that you will never do that again... then you do it again and your wife gets mad at you for filling the bottom of the closet with dusty old computer parts that do nothing but hurt your toe when you kick them in the dark.[/spoiler]

I'm kinda divided on which is the best way to go. I like to tinker so upgrading parts and pieces is fun for me. However, breaking down a system, balancing the specs I want with the specs my core system is capable of handling amidst the rather large spectrum of choices available and weighing whether or not to trust that guy on ebay with a 98% rating... it can be a hassle. Laptops and pre-configured systems can be very much worth the price if you consider not having to deal with it a valuable thing. If you want to upgrade later down the line, it means getting a whole new system though.

My inner self tells me to only invest in things I will enjoy. But my inner self doesn't have to balance a checkbook, so ...