Hi, this is my first posts on this forum.
I am looking for a notebook that supports GLSL programming.(and lightweight for mobility)
I had test the orange book sample program: ogl2brick with ATI mobility 9600(hp nc6000) and GeForce FX Go 5200(toshiba m2), but none of them can execute!
Does any one has the GLSL programming experience with notebooks?
And Do the other chip, such as ATI mobility 9200 or Intel Extreme Graphics support GLSL?
thanks for any suggestion.
That’s most likely because your drivers aren’t recent enough. Both the ATI 9600 and the NV 5200 should be able to support GLSL.
– Tom
Tom Is right - Both of those chipsets should work. Make sure you have the latest drivers.
I just upgraded to the Dell Inspiron XPS with the ATI Radeon Mobility 9800. glsl shaders work great. And Doom3 works too!
I love this laptop - the only drawback is that it is not exactly small or light. It’s really more of a portable than a laptop…
azcoder how did you update your drivers?
ATI seems to disalow the instalation of Radeon drivers in portables. 
I am asking this because I have a Fujistsu amilo with a radeon 9000. Ok it’s not the best card to try out GLSL but it already has some shader support.
I really would like to try it out.
Does anyone know how to update the drivers?
thanks,
Paulo
Yes - ATI is less than stellar in supporting the mobile chipsets. I mean, they do not support the mobile drivers because the laptop vendors are supposed to wrap the ati drivers for their cards. Unfortunately this is a complete and utter failure since the laptop vendors take eons to do anything. ATI should follow nvidia and at leat non-officially allow mobile support in their driver releases.
Luckily, the Omega drivers (which are really just tuned ATI drivers), do support the mobile chipsets.
You can get them at http://www.omegadrivers.net/.
I have also found http://www.driverheaven.net/ to be helpful…
Good Luck!
You can use this tool if you want to install a regular Catalyst driver on a mobile part:
The Radeon 9000 doesn’t support GLSL; you need at least a 9500. The Intel Extreme does not support GLSL, although the brand new 915G part (PCI Express) could theoretically support it, being PS_2_0 compliant – but they don’t have the necessary driver support.
I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 with Mobility 9700, and after updating to the latest drivers from Dells web site (came out late this summer), I can run GLSL stuff.
Or buy any laptop with FX go chip get the latest drivers from nvidia site, patch it using inf file from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ and enjoy!
yooyo
While we are on this subject, what are our options for GLSL support on notebooks running Linux?
Thanks for your all information guys.
So it seems that my only solution to play with high level languages for shading in my portable, is to use DX for the meantime.
Both the 9600 and the 5200 should support GLSL. What we’re saying is get the latest drivers onto those laptops, and it should work. I don’t understand how you can draw the conclusion that this means you can only use DirectX.
He mentioned he got a 9000. So that means GL_ATI_fragment_shader on the GL side, while he could use HLSL in DX. On the other hand, HLSL support for ps1.x shaders have always been crappy.
As for nvidia their support for linux is quite good. You have GLSL and drivers run at pretty much the same speed as the windows drivers though some special app specific optimizations may be missing.
As far as I know ATI has currently no support for GLSL on linux and the performance penalty is quite huge (50-30% percent slower).
ATI’s behaviour regarding notebook drivers is really the best reason to buy one with a nvidia card. (Don’t beat me - I know: Notebook drivers are so very special and unique that it needs some INF-file hackers to make them work…)
I had the same problem with NVIDIA notebook drivers (actually, I was stuck with 28.xx for OVER A YEAR). The problem is not ATI or NVIDIA; the problem is Dell (and the other OEMs). And, yes, there may be parts of the specific display that they are driving that won’t be “done right” when you use hacked drivers. If you take the INF from your old display driver, and merge it with the new driver files, you’re probably a little safer, but Dell might still decide to void your warranty…
I say that I can use DX because HLSL is supported at the library level, not at the driver level as it happens with GLSL.
This means that I can use the HLSL compiler to generate vertex/pixel assembly code. As far as I know I can’t do the same with GLSL.
And as much as I would like to learn GLSL with a better notebook/graphics card, for the moment I’m stuck with this one.
Cheers
I believe NVIDIA’s Cg compiler toolkit can accept GLSL as an input language, and output ARB_fragment_program and similar assembly. It may even be able to output ps_2_0 – wouldn’t that be ironic! 
I could be wrong, though – I don’t have an install right here to check on.
Originally posted by jwatte:
[b]I believe NVIDIA’s Cg compiler toolkit can accept GLSL as an input language, and output ARB_fragment_program and similar assembly. It may even be able to output ps_2_0 – wouldn’t that be ironic!
I could be wrong, though – I don’t have an install right here to check on.[/b]
Yes, use the -oglsl flag. YOu can output to any of the supported vertex/fragment profiles.
Hi arseue …
I have recently taken Dell notebook computer with NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 graphics card. I just started writting programs using GLSL. But I found out that my graphics card does not support GLSL . I have seen your message to the forum. I am still unable to belive that my NVIDIA card does not support the GLSL. I have also installed the latest driver “66.93_win2kxp_english” , but still it is the same. Does any body have similar problem, does any body tried NVemulator. Any suggestion will be very helpful for me. Thanks in advance.
-Chandu.
There are different caps in GLSL for different hardware it seems also. For instance I can run longer fragment programs on my desktop with a X800 than I can on my laptop with a 9700. Of course, GLSL says it compiles on both it just crashes on a 9700! Would be nice if the driver would give better feedback than a crash
I have a HP laptop with a GFFX Go5700 and I have tried installing Forceware 71.20 from http://www.station-drivers.com/page/nvidia%20forceware.htm
and they work without any modification.
With previous drivers I have to modify the .inf file, but this one supports all the FX Go family.
Those drivers have GLSL support for the GeForce FX family.
