The reason for this post is that I'm worried that because notebook drivers are maintained not by AMD but by the notebook manufacturers, and the manufacturers are notoriously bad about updating video drivers, that we notebook owners may never get a chance to play Rage. Is this concern unfounded or something to be genuinely concerned with?

nevermind notebooks... RAGE wont run properly on most PC's in general. not until we get either a stable driver release from ATI, or Id games decides to release a patch of sorts. i would suggest refraining from buying RAGE until these numerous issues are resolved.

This is not an id problem. Please wait for ATI to release their drivers.

This would also be interesting for most of the Mac users who want to play Rage on Bootcamp.

I have a AMD HD 6970 M. The latest driver release for this card is officially from AMD, but its from January. At least you can download it from the AMD website. But with this driver, Rage runs - slow - but starts at least. But other games lose more than 50% performance.

it may not be Id's problem to fix, but this fiasco is def Id's fault. this is what happens when you have a development cycle that outlives the technology. ATI hasnt propperly supported OpenGl for a long time, simply because no one was using it. And it was Carmack that decided to go the OpenGL route. So i would agree with you that a patch from Id would fix nothing. ATI needs to release drivers with solid OpenGL support.

Maybe it's AMDs drivers, that don't support OGL that well - but - a game that crashes on startup - has so many obvious graphic errors - how can you launch it? And why would you?
It is Bethesda's fault to release a game that does not run well on many systems. Do you remember when the first DirectX 10 games came out? They ran on both, DirectX9 AND 10! As this game could run on different OpenGL versions instead of crashing ...

actually it is also ID problem some moron thought that best are auto setting but who plays at auto settings these day - especially that kind auto settings that doesn't work

I have been playing the game with excellent frame rates at 1920x1080 on my hp envy 15 laptop with a second tier GPU (AMD 5830m) since Oct 3.

AT first I experienced CTD on startup, but after installing the Oct 3 hotfix I was able to launch the game normally and it ran very well, looked stunning. In a couple of locations, very briefly, there were flashes of striated artifacts (thin diagonal lines), such as in the Ghost HIdeout. This was very rare and difficult to capture with a screenshot because it was so brief when it happened.

Then I installed the Oct 4 drivers and tweaked the Steam launch settings and played the game again yesterday. This time I did not experience any striated artifacts, but occasionally I would see phantom bullets/gun parts floating next to my weapon and when I got to Wellspring I noticed NPC flickering/artifacting. The frame rate was consistently excellent, megatexture streaming was very fast, no pop-in problems, and apart from the artifacts, the game looks absolutely stunning on my laptop.

I have not tried any rageconfig.cfg tweaks.

There is not really any difference between laptop/desktop AMD driver issues that I'm aware of. For example, my 5830m is based on the same die as the desktop 5770 and people with the desktop 5770 seem to have similar issues. Also, I have never needed to install special mobile drivers, etc., if you have a recent version of Catalyst Control Center (within the last 12 months), you can install any hotfix easily without uninstalling the previous drivers/registry sweep, etc.

In any case, keep an eye on http://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator for updates on the next AMD Rage/BF3 Unified Driver, coming soon.

why is this not an ID problem? i just wonder why every other game on the market seems to work with current drivers? (except BF3, which is beta)
i dont mean to troll you, my friend.
i am just very upset with ID, being that this is not the first time they let me down.
And now after this? i thought they were all about PC gamers, evidence is pointing the other way.