Do ATI cards show their real performance after the 8.41/8.42 improvements?

[givemesugarr]

My IGP(ATI Radeon X1200) was working fine with 8.40, and I managed to get it working with 8.41, and I noticed this:
In both, I get general graphical corruption on the desktop, for example, when making a box with the mouse. Videos sometimes worked, sometimes not :/ But my glxgears went from 800~850 to 1200~1250 between the drivers. and most games had noticeable improvement.

what options are you actually using? and are you still using 8.41 or have you moved to 8.42?

[Extreme Coder]

what options are you actually using? and are you still using 8.41 or have you moved to 8.42?

I haven't yet managed to get 8.42 installed on Mandriva, so I'm waiting with 8.41 untill they package it.

I don't think I used any special options.

[Extreme Coder]

You're probably UMA-only with that GPU- I've not seen a Hypermemory option with anything using it.

Oh. So HyperMemory is only for IGPs with Integrated Memory of its own, like TurboCache?

The X1200 moniker is really deceptive. You'd think you had a hot R500 series GPU with that name- it's got more in common with the X700 than the X1xxx series parts and it's a crippled X700 at that. No Vertex Shaders- no hardware TCL which means you're only slightly better than a GMA 950 in performance at best.

Sadly, I know that.
I wasn't tricked by the name though, I looked it up before buying this MoBo.
But the slightly better performance than GMA 950.. I'd disagree with that.
My friend has a similar PC to mine, Intel C2D processor, 1 GB RAM, and an Intel GMA X3000, and the latest drivers, yet his PC struggles with Half Life 2 with most settings on Low at 800x600, while my PC ( with the Radeon X1200) can run it with most settings at medium or high and HDR enabled at 1024x768. And most other games are this way.

Now I wouldn't call that a slight performance increase :P