Ati Mobility Radeon X300 doesnt work in Windows 7

Hi. This is my first thread ever. I will try to explain my problem. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, with Windows XP, and i updated it, installing Windows 7 Home Premium. Everything works perfect, the only thing that is not working properly is my graphics card. Its an Ati Mobility Radeon X300 with 64mb. The problem is, that Windows 7 says its only a 32mb card. I dont know if it is a driver's issue, or what. It worked just fine with Windows XP, and even when i tried Windows Vista for a month. It worked well. The problem is that when i play, the old games i used to play like MVP Baseball 2005, Halo Ce, Age of Empires III, stuff like that, the games frizzes too much it is imposible to play. I installed the drivers from Dell's website for the video card, and tried the driver offered in Windows Update too. Nothing works. I searched the internet for months and i couldnt find someone with the same issue, W7 recognizing the video card with half the memory it has. I think that might be the problem. No W7 drivers available for this card on ATI's website either. I would appreciate any help since nobody has been able to help me, not even " IT's friends " :=( everything works perfect but id love to play my games since i cant afford buying a new laptop with a better videocard and i wont go back to XP! Or is this the only way this card will work with W7? with half the memory?

Originally Posted by MidniteKing

Hi. This is my first thread ever. I will try to explain my problem. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, with Windows XP, and i updated it, installing Windows 7 Home Premium. Everything works perfect, the only thing that is not working properly is my graphics card. Its an Ati Mobility Radeon X300 with 64mb. The problem is, that Windows 7 says its only a 32mb card. I dont know if it is a driver's issue, or what. It worked just fine with Windows XP, and even when i tried Windows Vista for a month. It worked well. The problem is that when i play, the old games i used to play like MVP Baseball 2005, Halo Ce, Age of Empires III, stuff like that, the games frizzes too much it is imposible to play. I installed the drivers from Dell's website for the video card, and tried the driver offered in Windows Update too. Nothing works. I searched the internet for months and i couldnt find someone with the same issue, W7 recognizing the video card with half the memory it has. I think that might be the problem. No W7 drivers available for this card on ATI's website either. I would appreciate any help since nobody has been able to help me, not even " IT's friends " :=( everything works perfect but id love to play my games since i cant afford buying a new laptop with a better videocard and i wont go back to XP! Or is this the only way this card will work with W7? with half the memory?

Check you BIOS for video card memory allocations.

Thanks for replying! How do i do that? I already checked the BIOS and it doesn't show my video card. The only video options are silly ones about the brightness of the LCD. There is nothing i can modify about my video card there....

Originally Posted by MidniteKing

Hi. This is my first thread ever. I will try to explain my problem. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, with Windows XP, and i updated it, installing Windows 7 Home Premium. Everything works perfect, the only thing that is not working properly is my graphics card. Its an Ati Mobility Radeon X300 with 64mb. The problem is, that Windows 7 says its only a 32mb card. I dont know if it is a driver's issue, or what. It worked just fine with Windows XP, and even when i tried Windows Vista for a month. It worked well. The problem is that when i play, the old games i used to play like MVP Baseball 2005, Halo Ce, Age of Empires III, stuff like that, the games frizzes too much it is imposible to play. I installed the drivers from Dell's website for the video card, and tried the driver offered in Windows Update too. Nothing works. I searched the internet for months and i couldnt find someone with the same issue, W7 recognizing the video card with half the memory it has. I think that might be the problem. No W7 drivers available for this card on ATI's website either. I would appreciate any help since nobody has been able to help me, not even " IT's friends " :=( everything works perfect but id love to play my games since i cant afford buying a new laptop with a better videocard and i wont go back to XP! Or is this the only way this card will work with W7? with half the memory?

I'm having a similar problem. I also have an Inspiron 6000 with the ATI x300 video card except mine has 128mb of onboard memory. For me, Windows 7 detects that I have 128mb of video memory correctly. The performance of the video card when playing games under Windows 7 is horrible though. One thing I noticed is that under Windows XP, my CPU would hit 100% and stay there while I was playing. From what I understand, the video card works with the CPU to give maximum performance. Under Windows 7, I'm only seeing about 40% CPU utilization while gaming. I'm pretty sure this is my problem. I've been doing a lot of research but have been unable to figure this out either.

Originally Posted by ektay

I'm having a similar problem. I also have an Inspiron 6000 with the ATI x300 video card except mine has 128mb of onboard memory. For me, Windows 7 detects that I have 128mb of video memory correctly. The performance of the video card when playing games under Windows 7 is horrible though. One thing I noticed is that under Windows XP, my CPU would hit 100% and stay there while I was playing. From what I understand, the video card works with the CPU to give maximum performance. Under Windows 7, I'm only seeing about 40% CPU utilization while gaming. I'm pretty sure this is my problem. I've been doing a lot of research but have been unable to figure this out either.

There are so many things that could be causing this. First of all, what i think is that our already old Inspiron 6000 is not a gaming laptop. I used to be able to play old games with the lowest resolution back in Windows XP. Since i upgraded to Vista, my cpu was 100% all the time, even when i wasnt using the laptop. Then i tried Windows 7, everything works great, but the video card doesnt work too well when it comes to games. So i uninstalled Windows 7, installed the Xp that came with the laptop in first place, then i reduced the space in the windows XP partition and gave it 15 GB. The rest of unused spaced, i created a new primary partition, and installed Windows 7 there. So i used XP ( without any service pack or program or updates) for playing my old games that the pc seems to run, and then i use 7 for work, school and everything. Your problem could be: there are definitely NO updated drivers for windows 7 for the X300, but yours seems to be a little newer than mine since windows recognized your 128mb version. Mine says its a 32mb card and it is a 64 one. Games frizzes every 15 seconds and it makes it too hard and annoying to play. Try to never play unplugged from the AC Power. Then check the energy plan that you are using, since playing with economic battery reduce the power for the video card. try to use the high performance plan and check the advanced settings and look for the video card settings and set it to work 100% when plugged in. Then you can try low graphic settings in the game you are playing, and changing the windows aero theme to basic, at least while you play, if windows its not doing it by itself. But anyways, i think that this laptops starts to overheat and it messes with the video card. I will disarm it and try to clean it up because the last time i did it was 2.5 years ago and it was nasty. Too much dust inside and it was overheating the video card.

Due to the age of the graphics card ATI only provide a legacy driver (which is also for vista but should be ok for 7). The link for this download is here:

ATI Catalyst.

I also ran your machines through the compatibility centre:
Windows 7 Compatibility: Software Programs and Hardware Devices: Find Updates, Drivers, and Downloads

Nothing came up relating to that machine although that doesn't necessarily mean it won't run 7....
Try the above driver and see if it helps some. I'd also make sure your system Bios as well as system drivers are the latest versions..

Originally Posted by kemical

Due to the age of the graphics card ATI only provide a legacy driver (which is also for vista but should be ok for 7). The link for this download is here:

ATI Catalyst.

I also ran your machines through the compatibility centre:
Windows 7 Compatibility: Software Programs and Hardware Devices: Find Updates, Drivers, and Downloads

Nothing came up relating to that machine although that doesn't necessarily mean it won't run 7....
Try the above driver and see if it helps some. I'd also make sure your system Bios as well as system drivers are the latest versions..

Yes. every single driver in my pc is updated, the bios too. i heard about the catalyst drivers, but never understood it and i wasn't sure which version i was supposed to use! now this link you gave me shows my graphic card there, remember that the card works with 7, the problem is that it shows half the amount of memory it actually have... anyways, i am downloading the catalyst drivers in this very moment, i will post you the results as soon as i finish installing them! Thank you!!!!!!!!!


Edit: i really appreciate your help since its been a little while since i tried the forum to get help =) finally someone gave me a reasonable answer. One little problem that i noticed is that the laptop is still freezing when i play even in my XP partition (that partition has no problem with the video card since its the original OS). So i think it might be overheating maybe? I noticed something this morning, i was playing with battery and it wasn't frizzing.....weird right? ( CPU was quiet, so was the cooling fan, and the laptop was not hot). I have not tried the Catalyst drivers yet, they are still downloading. I hope that the video card is not dying on me! if im watching a movie on VLC and i move the mouse, it freezes. if i watch youtube, all the videos freeze for 5-10 seconds and then they run fine for 20 seconds and then they freeze again.

Hmm.. if you think that overheating is a problem try cleaning the vents ect.. Use a a fine paintbrush or compressed air (you can buy these from office supplies). The new driver may help to cut some of this out so let me know once it's installed if there's any improvement..
Good luck!

Originally Posted by kemical

Hmm.. if you think that overheating is a problem try cleaning the vents ect.. Use a a fine paintbrush or compressed air (you can buy these from office supplies). The new driver may help to cut some of this out so let me know once it's installed if there's any improvement..
Good luck!

Hey! back again. I downloaded the drivers, i installed them and nothing happened. It didnt install the drivers, i can tell because the screen never flashed, and the info remains the same, and it didn't show any new installed program, the catalyst control center (im sorry that my windows is in Spanish). check the picture i uploaded. There were two options at the ATI website you gave me, i choose the first one. Did i download the wrong file? I installed it with the express settings, since the only thing i could customize was the directory for install it. The pc is dust-free outside, but 2 years ago i cleaned it inside and it was full of dust. Should i try that again? By the way, from the picture you can see that the graphics work normal in Windows, its the amount of memory displayed the problem, and of course the frizzing while gaming / watching a movie / youtube / any kind of video or DVD. =(

I know i sound dumb but it would be of great help if could help me with the installation of the Catalyst stuff.

Hi Midnight,
sorry to hear it didn't go as planned although it does sound like you downloaded the correct driver on that page.
Try removing all previous versions of graphics driver then right-click on the downloaded driver and choose properties. Look along the top for compatibility and set it to run as if it was running under vista.
Once the installation process has run through check the logs at the end to make sure it's installed (you may need to reboot to complete installation).
Another thing you could try is installing under safe mode...

This guide may also prove helpful:
20870InstallGuideforATIHardware&Drivers