Enable Hardware acceleration on Lenovo ThinkPad X100e

The reason why you don’t get hardware acceleration even with Flash 10.1 beta 3 is because the driver shipped with Lenovo is out of date. The driver shipped with x100e laptop is version 8.663, but in order to support flash hardware acceleration under 10.1 beta, you need at least driver version 8.680 or above and also you will need Catalyst 9.11 or above. So you will need to update your driver. By default, Lenovo block any non-official driver update. however, there is a wary around it by doing it manually. go to this AMD link:

From there, go to option 2, Download both the driver and the Catalyst Control Center software. Extract the driver files on your X100e (you can either extract it by clicking on the driver file, it ask for an extract location, and once it is extracted, it will try to install, you can cancel the install, you just want to extract the files, that’s all you want from it. so you can cancel the installation. Alternatively, you can extract it with a third party program like WinRAR).

Now, Open up your device manager under Control Panel. Find your video card (Radeon HD3200) and right click to get properties. you can check the driver version. currently, it should read version 8.663.  then go update driver. select install from your own location. then select pick from a list of device. then click “have disc”. From there, you will need to navigate to the driver file that you have extract earlier, to find the INF file. The correct driver INF files should be store under the location that you have extract it to. default location is: C://ATI/10-2_vista32_win7_32_dd/Package/Drivers/Display/W7_INF/

Once you have selected the INF file (either CL_95692 or CW_95692 is fine). It will load and now you will now be able to choose from a list of driver that you can install. find “ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics”. There should be two of them. you can choose either one, they should both work. Once you have install this driver, restart your computer. The driver version should now read version 8.702.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnJte3I_RWg

Enable Hardware acceleration on Lenovo ThinkPad X100e

Once you have done that. Install the Catalyst Control Center (the second file that you have download earlier). Once you have done that, restart again. Once you have done the second restart. open up Catalyst Control Center. You will need to set it up again. then go to advance setting. Select Information Center. It should now read.

Driver Package version: 8.702-100202a-09569C-ATI
Catalyst Version: 10.2

If you have that, try going to YouTube now and watch any HD content, even at 1080p, it will run extremely smoothly as hardware acceleration is now in place on your Thinkpad X100e which is an ultra hd laptop on sale in Canada. I just hope that Lenovo will come out with a driver update soon because the default video driver is crap and you will need to manually install a better driver to make this work! Once you got this working, the machine works like a dream on HD video.

Also with regards to other performance issue. I highly recommend getting ride of ThinkVantage Access Connection. and ThinkVantage Power Management. Just uninstall them. However, do not uninstall the Power Management Driver (Windows 7 can still use it). The ThinkVantage software is a bunch of resources hog. if you get rid of it and just let Windows 7 management your internet connection and power management, your computer will feels a lot faster. I am sure benchmark wise it will be the same or similar, but from day to day use, it will feel much faster. I almost was going to uninstall ThinkVantage toolbox as well, but I stop short or doing that as it does offer a few advantages to have that running. Anyway, let me know how it goes.