GUI interfaces to ATI card behave weirdly out of the box and after updates

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My Lenovo W500 came with an ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 and both the Catalyst control center software and Vista display manager display four monitors. What's really annoying is the behaviour. My two active displays (laptop display + my external monitor) are always #s 3 and 4 respectively which doesn't make sense. This is out of the box.

Additionally dragging & dropping is jumpy and displays #1 and 2 (always inactive because they don't exist to the software) are often preventing me from dragging #3 and 4 to the rightmost side. They also auto-snap to weird positions and certain sensible positions like position one directly over top of the other are not possible.

The exact same annoyances are present when using the Windows Display manager too. In other words the interface is crap and I'm looking for a fix that's not wishing I had gone with nVidia instead.

I've updated drivers, and Catalyst control centre. Have latest Windows and AMD/ATI updates.

Any thoughts?

Graphics Software Driver Packaging Version 8.563.2.1-090401a-079160C-Lenovo
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 7.01.01.849
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0630
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8306
Catalyst® Control Center Version 2009.0401.1328.22301

Graphics Hardware Primary Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility FireGL V5700
Device ID 9591
Vendor 1002
Subsystem ID 2126
Subsystem Vendor ID 17AA
Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16
BIOS Version 010.088.000.021
BIOS Part Number BK-ATI VER010.088.000.021.034663
BIOS Date 2009/09/30
Memory Size 512 MB
Memory Type DDR3
Core Clock in MHz 600 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 700 MHz

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John K

Posted 2010-03-06T21:26:47.760

Reputation: 2 148

which version of the Catalyst drivers do you run? – Snark – 2010-03-06T21:39:10.633

@snark: Added info to the question. – John K – 2010-03-06T23:55:53.190

Answers

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Answer was to go to the laptop manufacturer's (Lenovo) website and download/reinstall their Catalyst drivers instead of the drivers from ATI or Microsoft.

I guess the laptop supports a very specific set of requirements and is responsible for updating the drivers accordingly.

This didn't solve all problem shown above but made incremental improvement until a new ATI driver is released by Lenovo for the W500 laptop series.

John K

Posted 2010-03-06T21:26:47.760

Reputation: 2 148