MacBook Pro, Boot Camp, & ATI

[cr0ybot]

Hello almighty Mac OS X Hints Forum!

I'm having some problems with my MacBook Pro's graphics card and drivers.

I'm using Boot Camp (from Leopard) with Windows XP Pro, just trying to play Neverwinter Nights (1, not 2).

The first issue arose when I installed the driver update and Catalyst Control Center from http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/mac/bootcamp-xp.html. When I restarted, I was getting error messages, so I looked them up and found out that I needed to install .NET Framework 2.0, so I did. Now, even after reinstalling Catalyst a few times, it gives me this error on startup:

Quote: Catalyst Control Centre: Monitoring program has encountered a problem and needs to close.

When I try opening the program, it gives this error:

Quote: Catalyst Control Centre: Command Line Interface has encountered a problem and needs to close.

(Note: I'm not British, it's actually spelled "centre" in the error report)

I've searched for a few days with no luck on this.

My other issue(?) is with ATITool. A little background: I did the Boot Camp beta with Tiger, and I remember getting a "VPU Recovery" message while trying to play games. Back then I fixed it with a tutorial and ATITool, though I can't remember how. Anyways, my hard drive died, got a new one, and got Leopard, installing the new Boot Camp, etc. Now when I play NWN, every once in a while the screen freezes, then goes black and "recovers," just like the "VPU Recovery" that used to happen, but without the message.

So I figured that I would install ATITool and try to find that tutorial again, but the tutorial is nowhere to be found. That doesn't bother me so much, but I was reading this thread and got a little confused... The last post explains what that user set ATITool to:

Quote: Standard clock for the Mobility X1600 is 470MHz for both core and memory. In testing, I found that to be a bit unstable after a few hours of heavy play on my MacBook Pro. I clock to 430 core, 450 mem and it's fine. If you use ATI Tool, you'll find it features an automated method to test for the highest stable safe and stable speed. It gives quite a boost, considering the Apple-set clock is 310MHz core/mem, if I remember rightly.

When I open ATITool, at the top under "Profile" in the drop down menu, it says "Default (84.81 / 84.81)." and above the two sliders, "Core" says "1314.56" and "Memory" says "1399.37." Since these numbers are wildly different than what this poster described, I haven't messed with ATITool.

I'm on a dual core MacBook Pro (17") with a Radeon X1600 graphics card (and whatever else comes standard with the MacBook Pro 17").

...Any suggestions?

[AHunter3]

My guess is that you'd get more useful support from a Windows-centric forum. I don't think your problems are specific to Mac hardware and they certainly have nothing to do with Mac software.

[cr0ybot]

Hmm... guess you're right. Sorry for introducing clutter.

[trevor]

By the way, Neverwinter Nights 1 is available for the Mac. It's not necessary to run Boot Camp to play it. It is published by MacSoft: http://www.destineerstudios.com/macsoftgames/index.html

Neverwinter Nights 2 will soon be available for the Mac. It's published by Aspyr:
http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/84

Trevor

[JDV]

I'm no gamer and so I have no useful input to the solution, but I think I disagree that this is not a Mac issue, given the URL provided by the poster makes specific reference to bootcamp-XP, so whatever that download provides, it is intended for use on the Mac. It's a small point, but it isn't at all clear that a Windows-forum would have any great number of users more conversant with that than this one does, given that it is Mac users who have the most experience with Bootcamp.

Joe VanZandt