Can I update my Toshiba laptop graphics drivers?

Question

My Toshiba laptop (a Satellite A300) came installed with version 8.48 of the ATI Display Drivers (M82XT, M86). It has a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 video card.

I tried downloading the latest Catalyst Drivers from AMD's website, but when I run the installer I get a message which says that I cannot install them:

ATI Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware / software on your computer. The version of your graphics adapter is not supported. Please contract your notebook manufacturer for a graphics update.

A quick search around the net suggests that Toshiba have restricted the use of stock catalyst drivers - is this true? Is there any way I can install more recent display drivers?

Update: if it's not possible to update or install the AMD Catalyst drivers, is there anything else I can install to get some of the functionality that's in the Catalyst Control Centre? (I'm specifically after the ability to adjust my display when I'm running on an external LCD TV - for some reason mine loads with underscan, which I'd like to remove)

Answer 1

You're experiencing a common issue in laptops. Toshiba may have removed or added features including tie ins to your keyboard shortcuts. They do not generally rerelease every update of the ATI software as many of the updates only address minor issues or offer minimal performance enhancements.

Check Toshibas download section, if they deem an update necessary they will patch it for your model and add it to the models download page.

Answer 2

Well, the main problem is, Toshiba doesn't release updates to their graphic drivers purely because they probably want you to buy a new laptop just for that your apps or games would most probably end crashing or refusing to run in later time. They literarilly rely on their customers' frustration.

I have Toshiba myself and had a whole hell of problems f.ex. with Mass Effect 2 randomly crashing, Vue(versions 8 and higher) not enabling hardware shading and GPU acceleration(Photoshop too), which led me to a decision not to buy laptop of ANY brand, that restricts customers to their antique drivers and shady marketing methods(unfortunately this "economy model" is spreading between manufacturers recently).

Try downloading beta catalysts, they are usually not brand-restricted(and most of them run fine), also I'm running 11.11 catalyst now(which I tried due to Old Republic testing) and it's running fine, it even installed correctly by itself.

I have Toshiba P200-14H: C2D 2,0Ghz, 2GBRAM, Mobility Radeon 2600 HD