I, too, just wanted to thank everyone for their input with all this valuable information, especially those who

risked their own 'puters to find out! Although it took me 2 days to get through the whole string, the wealth

of info, advise, and expertise was amazing! Y'all convinced me! I just ordered my 64MG Mobility Radeon 9000

for my i5100, and I cant wait! Thanks again everyone! Y'all are great!

magis123,

Have you tried the Iomega drivers, too?  They increased my speed significantly as well and allowed me to overclock.  This is not a huge issue, since the ATI 9000 is really underclocked for laptops.  I don't keep it over clocked at all times, but just when I need a little extra for a game.  Good call on the RAM.  That will help, too.  When you do upgrade the P4 chip, let us know how that goes and how it helps everything else.  I would like to do the same here.  LOL

Well, good news, the ATI 9000 arrived today, took a total of maybe 5-10 minutes to do the swap, and it is up and running like a beauty ...

Ran 3dMark2001SE ... went from 3521 to 6870 ... not a bad improvement if I must say so myself ...

Hmm ... next upgrades will be another stick of 512 MB memory and then potentially a 3.06 P4 ...

Rob,

I haven't tried the Omega drivers yet, I might have missed that link somewhere in this post.  Wanna give me a link to them, that actually sounds pretty interesting.

Actually, after doing some tweaking here, I realized that my bottleneck probably isn't neccessarily the processor or the RAM (although both upgrades would definitely boost performance).  I believe my bottleneck may be in the hard drive itself since it has only 2 MB of cache and is only a 4200 RPM hard drive.  I am thinking that an upgrade here to the Toshiba MK5024GAY 50 GB 7200 RPM 16 MB cache hard drive from ATACOM:

http://www.atacom.com/program/print_html_new.cgi?&USER_ID=www&cart_id=9005737_24_54_215_82&Item_code=HDNB_TOSH_50_72

This drive would not only give me a boost in performance, it would also give me a little more storage as well (50 GB vs. 30 GB).

WOW!!!!  7200 rpm with 16 Meg buffer.  That takes the cake for me.  I am thoroughly impressed.  Let me know how it runs.  I think I have found my new piece of hardware... LOL.

Thank you, Robert

P.S. Here is the link for Omega (oops, I mispelled them... sorry):

http://www.omegacorner.com/

wow where were you a few weeks ago,lol.thats very nice of u cause i know us brits r having probs getting this card.I f hadnt had just bought a new card i would b really tempted.Ive just had a 7500 64mb shipped from the states and love it,Americas Army plays like a dream i even have to pinch myself,LOL.Upgrading from the 16mb version and adding another 256 ram was the best thing i have ever done.

I hope all goes well and u make a lot of Brits or even europeans very happy,

Happy gaming to u all

bhp236

Inspiron 5100,
P4-2.4Ghz Cpu,
512 DDR,
20Gig HDD,
Mobility Radeon 7500-64mb,
WinXP-Home-SP1

Message Edited by bhp236 on 03-30-2004 02:48 PM

Hi,

A few posts ago I read a question about spare Radeons 9000 not being sold in the UK. Is there anyone who has found a reseller or website yet?

Cheers, Squit

Squit - YGPM

Since I pack and ship about 10-20 packages a day with USPS (both domestic & international), if there is someone who is international and cannot get their hands on a ATI 9000, I would be willing to order it and then wait for it to be shipped to me, and then forward the shipment out to you as well.  Within reason of course, and the only real problem I would see here is that pretty much your warranty would be all but null and void since it would take forever to ship it back and then have me ship it to Dell (and then do the reverse to get a replacement).

Just thought I would add that out there in case anyone was interested, if so, PM me.

bhp,

I just actually stumbled on this thread last week (Wednesday 03-24-04 actually) and I was glad I did because I was actually only looking at upgrading to the 64 MB ATI 7500, until I saw this thread and saw that the 9000 was working on the i5100.  In hindsight, that day I was doped up on Ativan because I was having oral surgery and I probably should have waited until payday to purchase my video card (so it would have been easier to slip under the wife RADAR).  But oh well, my theory is that it is always easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.  LOL

And as far as making Brits & other foreign nationals happy, I have no problem doing that, so long as everything goes smoothly.

I have a pretty decent eBay feedback rating: (http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=magis123) (SHAMELESS PLUG - BTW, anyone looking for computer books, check out my auctions as well, I usually have anywhere from 20-50 up at a time.)  And also have a good HeatWare rating: http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?id=21605.  Just thought I would throw those out there so that it at least makes me look a little more legit.   I mean heck, if you want security or something like that, I can even go so far as setting up a private auction on eBay.

Squit, got your PM and your e-mail, replied to you ...

So far already have one happy person from the UK who needed a Radeon 9000, LOL, they questioned me ordering another Y0708 part for my same laptop, I had to explain that I did not have the customers laptop service tag handy and was just using mine.  The CSR tried to give me a little flak about it, but overall the first transaction went like butter.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Rob, I forgot to mention this, thanks for your link to the Omega drivers, I installed them and bumped my settings up a little bit (the first time I bumped them too high and it gridlocked on me!!! ), but with changing them around slightly I was able to eak it up to an 8000 3dMark2001SE score (this was with AA turned off of course).  Not too shabby if you ask me, that would make this a near 4500 point improvement over my previous card.  I also then put Madden 2004 in both my desktop and my laptop to let them both run to DEMO mode ... now obviously there are differences (AND THERE RIGHTLY SHOULD BE!!) but the laptop finally looked crisp and clean with all the switches set to max and running at 1024x768x32.  I am a happy camper.

Message Edited by magis123 on 03-31-2004 10:49 AM

Well, just got off the phone ordering another ATI 9000 video card for Squit here, the lady wanted to know why I had purchased 3 of the same video cards for the same laptop (because they were going by my Service Tag # :snicker:).  I think I rattled off that I like to keep some spare parts around.  She tried to sell me more RAM, then a larger hard drive ... both prices were EXHORBERANT.  I think I upset her when she was trying to sell me the hard drive and couldn't offer me a 7200 RPM laptop hard drive.  He-He.  I also inquired about the TrueMobile 1400 a/b/g Mini-PCI card, she told me they could not order those for me because they were out of stock.  Darnit, I realize I have a Linksys G-Band Card-Bus, but I have been in places (specifically work related) where having the A-band even just on a internal card, would be nice.

Haha, magis, nice one! Nothing Dell can come up with that a bit of smart talking can't fix! It kind of makes you wonder why they go through all the effort of preventing you from buying stuff from them. I think I understand their purpose, but it still seems a bit... unprofessional to me! Anyway, thx again (I'll just keep saying this every post :))

Cheers, Squit

OK, im having a problem. I bought the 9000 and an sxga screen but i think i got the wrong one. I got it off of ebay without researching it cuz it was only $100{for the screen}, it was for a dell latitude C610 and inspiron 4100, but it also said it might work with other laptops so i took the chance. I also got the sxga cable. so, it turns out the sxga cable fits the lcd but will definetely not fit the video card. and the regular xga cable fits the card but not the sxga screen...sigh...what should i do? anyway to get around this? thanks

ps. If im forced to purchase another screen, from which model laptop should i get it from? 

Message Edited by Albacore on 04-12-2004 07:30 PM

ok, i got it to work without the sxga screen.