AMD, Nvidia release drivers for BioShock

I'm assuming the NVidia driver is for desktop cards only? What about us GeForce GO users?

you cant play games on a laptop properly

Originally Posted by riggs
I'm assuming the NVidia driver is for desktop cards only? What about us GeForce GO users?

It'll be the same response from both AMD and Nvidia - "contact your laptop manufacturer". This is the sole reason why notebooks will never take over as the device of choice for PC gaming, even though they are fast becoming the form factor of choice for many families.

AMD's driver update is available as a hotfix and installs on top of your existing driver. It's said to fix stuttering, missing surfaces and/or display corruption in the game.

Well, I used Catalyst 7.2 drivers when I played this last night... no hotfix or anything like that... and didn't notice any of these issues...

this IS a huge game after all...... very interesting.....

Think I'll get out my Gramophone, gel back my hair, put my braces on and whack on my Spats. A bottle of Old Tom and a pack of schmokes too. :)

I haven't noticed any missing or texture corruption and I'm using the 7.7's (X1950 Pro AGP) - still, might as well get the hotfix - see if it improves anything.

Originally Posted by cjoyce1980
you cant play games on a laptop properly

I think you missed an "imo" off the end of your sentence.

Originally Posted by Tim S
It'll be the same response from both AMD and Nvidia - "contact your laptop manufacturer". This is the sole reason why notebooks will never take over as the device of choice for PC gaming, even though they are fast becoming the form factor of choice for many families.

I take it this is just down to cost? I.e., spend less time/money on minor products due to them having a smaller userbase?
I mean, the GO series driver hasn't had an update for over a year!?

Bah!

Hopefully the demo will have finished downloading by the time I get home...I'll be on the lookout for graphical glitches

Nah, basically the notebook manufacturers want to "certify" drivers for their notebooks. It's understandable on one front, but then it's not understandable on another front - the one where some PC gamers are playing games on a notebook.

Can anyone tell me if there are any performance differences under windows vista in dx10 with these ?

Originally Posted by riggs
I think you missed an "imo" off the end of your sentence.

No he did not, the structure and delivery of his sentence does not point to the opinion expressed being anyone else's but his.

No change on the demo with these drivers for me, but I could not see anything wrong when I played it last night anyway

Well, i can't get to run on my aging x800, don't know why they're listed on the hotfix.

Is it worthy to install beta drivers just for a demo ? I think I'll wait the stable forceware version. The demo runs all right anyway.

Urrgh - no hotfix for me. :(

strikes me as abit odd that they made a game which dosn't work with the latest drivers?

It's usually the other way around Kipman - the game developers adhere to a spec (i.e. DX10, DX9.0c, etc) when they programme the game and there may be certain bits of the game's code that could upset current drivers. Both ATI and Nvidia seem to have worked with 2K Boston to ensure there are drivers out before release that are 100% compatible and I'm sure the fixes will be rolled into the next "official" Catalyst/Forceware releases.

If you're not having problems, don't update... but if you do have problems, it's obviously the first port of call IMO.

Well, the demo seems to run ok @ 1280x800 with most settings on max (and no graphical/textural glitches that I can see). I am suffering from input/movement lag though; takes a split second for input to be recognised...any idea on what causes this? It's happened before in certain games and I never did find a solution

Oh, and lol @ the review thread and it's 3 pages of widescreen complaints!

Can any one explain why the ATI Bioshock hotfix is over twice the size of the normal driver file ?

Just installed it as I was seeing some texture issues on the demo.

What a load of crap it installs! Even the bloated drivers don't contain this much crap... Parental tools ?!?

I'm having no problems such as display corruption or stuttering in the demo so i won't be installing the hotfix untill after i see what the fullgame runs like.
I'm still on Cat 7.4 as they have been rock solid and everything i run runs great.
There seems to be far too many driver updates lately so i'm guessing that they're mainly just for sorting out the new dx10 cards problems.

I tried the demo with 7.8 drivers on my ATi X1950Pro and it ran well if not perfectly smooth at 1680x1050, no graphical issues. The next day upgraded to a 2900XT (I need to be sure this game runs perfectly!). Started off great, smoother and with better image quality. Until I got to the steps that is, and noticed the complete lack of any floor textures. It was as if everything from the waist down had been turned off.

Tried then running the game in DX9 mode, all fine, no problems.

Installed the hotfix last night, now DX10 is working fine too (though not appreciably different looking imo). So my guess would be that the ATi fix is primarily aimed at DX10 users. If you read the Readme.txt it does state to expect glitches with 2900XTs.

Originally Posted by cjoyce1980


you cant play games on a laptop properly

Unadulterated/uninformed codswallop

Have you seen the specs available for laptops these days You can get 'em with SLI'd 7950GT's for goodness sake

Originally Posted by rufiosab
Well, i can't get to run on my aging x800, don't know why they're listed on the hotfix.

same here, got wierd graphical corruption on my x800 with my old drivers (cursor completely missing, at the start of the demo all i could see was flames and corrupt rain effects, the water was just a huge black area) strangely enough, this is the first time i've had a driver problem with ati since i got my 9600pro many years ago

updated the driver, installed the hotfix, bioshock now 'encounters an error' and crashes to desktop instead :P

the hotfix seemed to break the driver in a stunning way, as 3dmark reported that it couldn't load the DX9 subsystem

anyway... got parts for a new PC arriving today/tomorrow, so that'll fix the problem

Well, found out why the x800 doesn't work, the game apparently only runs on SM3.0 cards

*goes back to waiting for the courier to arrive with parts for his new PC*

2K sucks for leaving so many gamers out in the cold, but luckily some awesome gamer came up with a patch for <a href="http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5680">Shader 2 cards</a>. Not all the textures are there yet (he's still working on it), but the demo is definitely playable.

I bought the game for the missus yesterday, and after researching the "Installing Credits" scandle before opeining the packaging, she went ahead and installed the game on her laptop.

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5500
1.67GHz, 667MHz FSB, 1MB Cache
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
2048MB RAM
512MB nVidia GeForce Go 7600 Graphics, displaying on a
17" Brightview Widescreen Display

No problmes with the install, or the activation (this time), but before it would let her run the game, it asked (read demanded), that she updated her graphics card drivers. Kindly providing a link to Nvidia's website, and downloading the package it suggested, we found that no compatiable driver was included.
We went directly to the Nvidia website, and found no support for her graphics. We went to the laptop manufacture's website, and found no support for her graphics. We (she) very nearly had enough after trawling over many countless websites looking for an answer.

Finally, I had an idea. Device Manager > Drivers > Update Drivers > Do you wnat Windows to check?? Yes I do!
Away went Windows, "Driver Found" > "Downloading Driver" > "Installing Driver" > Black Screen, followed by panic! > Done!!

Nothing's changed as far as I can tell, bar the updating of the Driver itself, but the game is up and running no problems or further issues. I can't comment on the game itself, as I've not had a look in, but from the way it's holding the missus attention, I'd say that it was very good indeed.

About the Ati Hotfix..

Maybe you are not noticing the lack of surfaces.. as it happened to me.. until I discovered that some Rooms should have lots of Blood on the Wall , I do not.. so the decals are missing, this is one of the Issues. I cant Update thought, since I have an AGP Card, and the Hotfix lays on the 7.8 Version of the Drivers, wich f#@k Up Agp.. AGP Community still waiting for a fix for that... :(

IccleD, when I saw your post I thought I was in for some luck... turns out I'm still stuck in a crap shoot. I tried letting windows search for an update on it's own but instead of coming up with new drivers I was simply given the message, "Your drivers are currently up to date."

Here are my system specs:

Dell Inspiron 1720
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500
2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT

Bioshock should be able to run very smoothly on my machine.... but because NVIDIA doesn't/can't supply updated drivers for Laptop graphics cards I guess I'm SoL. I'm thinking I'm just going to return the game, although the first level is pretty amazing (game locks up when trying to loading the second level).

Hey Xaab, take a look at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ for modified nVidia drivers. Essentially, they just take the official drivers and make them work with a wider range of cards (including mobile GFX).

I installed them on my 7900GTX equipped lappy the other night, and while I've not got round to testing Bioshock, I've had no problems.

[edit] ...and welcome to the forums!

Originally Posted by riggs
Well, the demo seems to run ok @ 1280x800 with most settings on max (and no graphical/textural glitches that I can see). I am suffering from input/movement lag though; takes a split second for input to be recognised...any idea on what causes this? It's happened before in certain games and I never did find a solution

Oh, and lol @ the review thread and it's 3 pages of widescreen complaints!

i fixed the mouselag issue by changing my sli rendering mode to alternate frame rendering :)