New Mac User - x1600 Driver Support Help

Question

I bought my first Mac yesterday afternoon after using a PC for 9 years, I was told Macs are user friendly, that they make computing easy but as of right now I am not finding that to be the case.
I am not a big gamer but I do enjoy World of Warcraft. I installed and patched the game and when I logged in I was noticing some studdering in the video when moving by either the keyboard or mouse. I figured that I just needed to tweak some settings in-game but the problem kept happening. So I decided to go ahead and update the video drivers and that is what has led me to here.
I can't find any x1600 256Mb drivers. It's as the video card is no longer supported. Now I have been reading that there are 3rd Party websites or that I have to spend more money to get Windows XP but I figure if these are the options after spending current sell price w/ AppleCare I am better to return this 18 hour old machine then have play doctor on a new rig.
What am I missing?
Current Spec
Machine Model: MacBookPro2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.33 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.158
MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

DraigCoch,
I think the last poster assumed that you were running XP (and it appears from your initial post that you are not), and running the game there.
So, I will respond to your concerns about OS X video drivers.
No, you will not find them listed on ATI's website. Apple works with the various video card manufacturers (well, the developers, anyway), and in most cases the latest versions of the OS X drivers for all the "OEM" cards Apple uses are included in OS X. When new drivers become available, they are installed along with updates to OS X.
In some cases, ATI produce a new driver, but release of that driver will wait for the next update to OS X. This delay is usually on the order of only a few weeks, however, so the short answer to your question is that you already have the latest drivers. This is one of the reasons it can be said that "Macs just work." Of course, they are still computers...
So, the problem is not with the drivers. It is either with the game (reinstall??), or it is completely possible that there is something wrong with your installation of OS X. I frequently recommend that anyone with a new computer (Mac or otherwise) format the hard drive, then reinstall the OS themselves. Further, I recommend that they "zero" the drive in the process.
Many computers ship from the factory with incipient disk errors. OS X will automatically repair these errors if they are minor, but critical system files could remain damaged. In addition to insuring that you have a properly-running installation of OS X, "zeroing" the hard drive will map out any bad blocks found on the drive, thus making it much less likely that you will encounter a disk error in the near future.
All this said, there could be something wrong with your MBP, hardware wise, but it is much more likely that you just have a bad installation. Also, the only way to make any determination on this score is to follow my recommendations, ruling out any software problem.
Scott