I have two options:

a) drivers from ATI: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx
The newest drivers and usually what people recommend.

b) drivers from WU:
I've used them for a long time, and they've always worked fine. Though they're from the 30th of September 2009 so there's a possibility I could achieve some extra performance from using ATI from the 27th of July 2011. Sure could use some when playing Witcher 2.

I guess it would probably be a no-brainer if I had a proper graphics card, but I am using a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570, and I am not sure how much extra performance can be gained from using other drivers than the ones from WU.

Acer Aspire 7540G
AMD Athlon II X2 M300 2.0 GHZ
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
4 GB RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium 64x

I'm posting this in the Witcher 2 sub-forum since I am mainly interested in gaining performance for that game. And possible if the new drivers from ATI do anything special for Witcher 2 to warrant me installing them. nVIDIA graphics cards seems to be largely optimized for most games I play.

Thanks for taking your time to read my thread.

How did the latest patch botch things for ATI users?

Shall I visit you and read the forum to you? ;)
Lots of cries for help.
But let's not derail another help attempt.

I've already finished the game once albeit on low settings so it does work for me. The patches were great and with the ATI drivers I get about:

1. 640x480 (low settings) 25 fps
2. 720x480 (low settings) 20-25 fps
3. 800x480 (low settings) 20 fps
4. 800x600 (low settings) 15-20 fps

Sure, I might not be able to play with a stunning constant 60 fps, but it's a much better option than having to wait for me to arse myself to get a better gaming rig. 800x480 is nice and big almost covering my whole 1600x900. Too bad the text is so blurred that I have to really get close to the screen to read.

Thank you for your answer, I'll stick to ATI's drivers then.

Because I haven't heard of this before I got curious and searched through the last few pages. It turned out that the performance problems are kinda mixed and not solely related to ATi cards:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/witcher_2_stuttering --> has an Nvidia card

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/new_amd_card_runs_tw2_like_a_slug --> has an ATi card but claims that patch 1.3 fixed the slow performance

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/fps_downfall_after_1_3_as_mmo_lags --> has an Nvidia card

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/patch_1_3_killed_my_computers_ability_to_run_tw2_please_help --> has a (slow) ATi card


@topic: I will start my second run of TW2 with the latest ATi driver (upgrading from Catalyst 11.4 to Catalyst 11.7) shortly. I'll report back whether the game runs slower, better or equally good as on my first playthrough.

Ah yes, screen resolution, I didn't think of that. I played temporarily with a dualcore@2.4GHz (+GTX460 though), but I never changed my 1920x1080 resolution, so I had pretty low graphics. I can promise you one thing: when you'll have a new pc and big display in the future, don't forget to pop in TW2, you'll be awe-struck. :D

Either the new ATI 11.8 drivers sucks ass or my laptop just works better with the old drivers from Windows Update. Recently started up Crysis 2 and couldn't make it past 10 fps on lowest settings. Then I tried the old drivers and were able to get 20-30 fps on 1024x480. I didn't have a significant difference with Witcher 2 though.