Subject: Re: Halo 2 on Vista crashes - Help
Newsgroups: Joe Q. Public:microsoft.public.windows.vista.games
To: kpowell <
[email protected]>
My graphics card is a Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family, 358
MB of graphics memory. My system has DirectX 10 installed with all the
latest drivers for my video chipset. My processor is only 1.73 Ghz
though, but I thought that it would not make any difference as it is
so close to 2Ghz.
I went to
http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/halo2.aspx
and got the following:
* Microsoft® Windows® Vista™
* 2 GHz or faster processor
* 1 GB of system RAM
* 7 GB available hard disk space
* NVIDIA 6100, ATI X700, or above
First problem as you already stated is CPU power, now they don't say if
a 2 Ghz or faster processor means a dual core or single core, BUT this
could be because Halo 2 is not multi-treaded (only runs on one core at a
time).
Now at 1.73Ghz, will your game run with Halo 2? Maybe, but if you ask
Microsoft about it they'll say we don't
Support you because
you're not running on what we
Recommend. Does that mean the game
won't run? Not always.
The other problem is the video. The cards listed, while older, are all
dedicated video cards. Your P965 video card is integrated into the
system chipset. I can't really say why this is bad, it's technical, but
lets just say, integrated cards, save for some of the newer cards, are
just nowhere near as good as a dedicated video card.
It does NOT matter how much video ram you throw onto the card. More ram
does not make the card faster, just lets it display more
pixels/colors/textures on the screen at once.
Also, I think the P965, when you say it has 358 MB of ram, that's
actually System Ram that your computer reserves for video. The
integrated setup your using does not have it's own video ram, it has to
share ram from your normal system RAM.
The only thing you can do is to go to Intel.com, find the latest video
driver for your setup. In your BIOS, set your video ram LOWER, like
128MB, you don't need a lot of video ram, you won't be able to run a
game on your system that needs more than 128MB of video ram.
Update all your other drivers like audio, computer chipset, DirectX
(find dxwebsetup.exe at gamesforwindows.com).
If you try to run the game with all updates applied and it still does
not run, I think you are screwed my friend.
Your game experience would be nothing short of miserable, even if it did
run.
My new Toshiba notebook has a nice screen, but it's got an integrated
notebook video card, thus about the only thing I can play on it is
Civilization 4 at lowest settings (turn based games FTW!). If you really
want to game on a notebook, find a notebook with a dedicated graphics
card (ASUS notebooks are great (G50/G70 /drool), so are Macbook Pros),
nVidia 9x00M cards are awesome.
