So, I'm playing on a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (yes, I'm running on a laptop) and I've recently been getting alot of VPU errors and crashes.  It started with Cinimatic 2.2, thats when i noticed the glitches.  But they would correct themselves whenever I played that cinimatic.  But now I've noticed there is a certain spot in all of the Exile Hideouts that will crash my game because of a VPU error.  And now, I just tried the brand new Zion Critical Missions and the VPU error happened 3 times, all of which were in interlock. 2 times it corrected itself, but the 3rd time I had to restart my computer.  I think I have the current drivers installed but I'm not sure.  Anyway, is there something you recommend me using?  Should I downgrade to a different driver that didn't have these problems, or upgrade to something else?

 

And I've seen people post these looooong things about their card specs but, since I dont know how to do that, you'll either have to make due or tell me how to get that info.  Thank you!

The ATi VPU recovery feature was a great idea, with seemingly poor implementation. THat is, the error seems to cause a lot of problems- but then, no one reports when it works correctly. The VPU recovery feature is designed to prevent bluescreens and hard resets when the graphics card overheats or appears to be stuck in some sort of continuous loop. The actual detection of this seems to be a little spotty, causin problems in many, many games. To combat this, ATi recently released the Catalyst 6.1 drivers, which pretty much solved the problem in Radeon 9800 and x800 cards, and then the 6.2's, which applied the fix to almost all Radeon 9xxx series cards. There is yet to be any real fix for x700 and lower cards, though ATi has been made aware that the drivers so far released don't help those cards.

 

Your system is going to be a little trickier, because you've got a mobility product that requires specialized drivers from the manufacturer. If they have updated their driver to the Catalyst 6.2 series, I would get those. Otherwise, you may need to look at third-party driver sites to get comnpatible drivers. Be aware that these drivers will not be supported by anyone- they are a try-at-your-own-risk venture. Officially, you should ask the notebook manufacturer to update their driver sets- if they receive enough requests, they may just go through their product lines and release the 6.2's for everyone.

 

If you can't get official drivers from the notebook maker, or find compatible 3-rd party drivers, see if the notebook manufacturer has any drivers based on the Catalyst 5.2's, as drivers from that series are far less affected by the VPU error.