SL 1.12.2.9 unusable with Radeon 9700

I give up !

I tried -everything-, but this damned SL client keeps crashing my computer real hard every 30 minutes or so (both Xwindow -and- Linux are crashed !).

This computer is a D470K notebook: Athlon64 3400+, 1Gb of RAM, Radeon 9700 mobility (128Mb VRAM), 1680x1050 LCD screen.

I run Linux Mandrake v10.2 (LE2005), in 32bits mode, with all security and bug fix patches applied, and a vanilla 2.6.18.1 kernel. The driver is ATI's (8.29.6) as Linux/Xorg one does not yet support the 9700.

I tried with the internal (fglrx) agpgart and the kernel's one, I tried with or without FastTLS (all three settings 0 /1/2 were tried), I tried with the Xv or with the OpenGL overlay, I tired with or without BlockSignalsOnLock... etc, etc... All to no avail !
I tried with ALSA or ESD... No difference.
I even changed the hard disk settings (hdparm), with or without mullticount, with or without unmasked IRQs, just in case this would interfere at the IRQs level with the video card...
I then tried with export LL_GL_NOEXT=x, but even there, it kept crashing !

Elsewhere, I got another computer (desktop Asus MB/Athlon XP 3200+/1Gb RAM/Radeon 9200/128Mb video card) and this one works fine with the native (kernel+Xorg) video drivers, but it fails with ATI's (8.28.8 as this is the last version supporting the 9200 :-( ... ) and like reported in another thread, with ATI drivers, the SL client eats up all the available memory (RAM+swap) before Linux kills it.

So, being desesperate, I finally booted again my computer under Windoze (something which happens VERY rarely), installed SL 1.12.2.9 on it and tried to play... After an hour or so, it crashed and then crashed again every few minutes (and no, it's not an overheating problem, according to the chips temperatures. The CPU and graphic card are not overclocked either). I had at least a dozen of crashes (and for some of them I let SL send crash reports to the server), before I finally switched back to Linux (where it crashed "only" half an hour later).

Oh, yes... One last thing.... My next buy will be a Nvidia graphic card. While ATI's hardware is great, their drivers SUCK BIG TIME, and their Linux support is close to ZERO !

That's basically what I'm doing -- I'm looking for a laptop and any one with an ATI or Intel graphics card will be summarily dismissed, and the person pimping it shown out the door.

I can confirm that the problem resides in the ATI drivers. I'm back home on my main (desktop) computer, and I bought a Nvidia GeForce 7600GT card for it (I replaced the old and rather slow Radeon 9200): I ran SecondLife for over 24 hours already and did not get a single crash, and I run it with ALL the graphic and open GL settings at the maximum (and still get over 15fps ).

I repeat: DO NOT BUY ATI. BUY NVIDIA. ATI sucks, NVIDIA rocks !