Problem with OpenGL and ATI

I’ve been developing a small framework to do some small games just for learning OpenGL. I found a problem… when I create a OpenGL window, a call to glGetString(GL_VERSION) returns 1.1.0 on the computer I’m working with, and it renders GLee useless since it can’t load any extension. Running the same application on my laptop reports using OpenGL 3.0.0. My problem is that I don’t really know if the problem is OpenGL, SDL, or my video card (I suspect it’s the latest).

To develop this framework I’m using SDL 1.3. My computer specs are the following:

-Windows Vista 64
-6 GB DDR3

• ATI Radeon 4870 x2 1GB Ram
• Intel Core i7 920

My laptop specs are the following:

-Windows Vista 64
-4 GB DDR2
-Nvidia GeForce 8600GT 256MB Ram
-Intel Core2 Duo

I have the latest drivers for both video cards. Have anyone come across with something like this? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

as always, run some other applications, see how they behave. this makes sure if your application is the cause or the system.
other then that maybe you specify an unsupported pixel format which should be never hardcoded but either iterated through supported ones.
http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/download.html

I found the solution while playing arround with a test application I wrote just to check information on SDL and OpenGL…

Actually enabling the SDL_GL_ACCELERATED_VISUAL before creating the window prevented the creation of context greater than the default 1.1 for windows, at least on my Radeon 4870 x2. On my laptop with an GeForce 8600GT it works fine with that flag enabled… and that’s weird