3d accelerator

Emericanized · Post by **Emericanized** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 11:35 pm

Hey all, I got the game quite a while ago and it seemed to keep crashing a lot, seemingly when a lot was going on in-game, my specs are as follows:

XP SP2
athlon 64 +4200 (X2) processors
2 gigs RAM
ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 series card
and way more than enough hard disk space...237 GB
oh and an ASUS DVD ROM and DVD burner (2 seperate drives) the writer is an HP.

its a pretty up to date comp but my one questions is about the 3d capability... im not sure if mine is. where do i go to tell if the card is 3d accelerated? I heard xpress series arent all that great but i dono.

the drivers are up to date, nothing running othre than the game to chew up system resources (other than avg) .. i uninstalled the game a while ago but im going to re install it tonight because i think its time for round 2.

and comments or advice would be awesome. Ill try to get the patches and stuff as well..I also reinstalled clean once with the same results.

I looked over the forum already but couldnt find the exact answers i was looking for!

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:45 am

The Radeon Xpress 200 series cards are PCI Express, a relatively new technology. Yes, it has 3d acceleration.

Your system specs are well beyond the game's requirements. Your hardware should be able to run the game smoothly, even with graphics set for highest quality.

Are you letting Windows handle the size of your page file, or have you set it manually? If you set the size, how big is it? Increasing page file size may help a little with performance.

Does your machine run hot? Not long ago I noticed a severe loss in performance when I was playing my games, and nothing I did seemed to help. Then blew the hell out of the inside of my PC with an air compressor, and just like magic my performance issues disappeared along with the dust that had accumulated inside the machine.

Try disabling AVG (if you can, I'm not familiar with that particular anti virus software) while you play the game. Anti virus programs usually eat up a lot of system resources, to the detriment of other processes.

There are a lot of other things you can try as well. There's a thread [url="http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampire/topic.asp?fid=9643&tid=1543953"]here[/url] that has a lot of tips for increasing performance with this game.

greggyshotokan · Post by **greggyshotokan** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:11 am

Well it shudnt really bother u that much as the game crashes on every single configuration whether during all the Loading screens or during the actual game. Ur comp wud handle heaps of games even the ones that are coming.... yet I wud consider a Graphic card change to a betta one mate.... definetely not a.... Rad.... dont wanna be the bad guy here but....Nvidia has overtaken the market..... few are those who still hope to see Ati sign during the intro.... Just a hint ...not implying anythin..... and save a lot mate... HELPS!

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 2:46 am

ATI or Nvidia is not really the point here....

The problem seems to be the integrated ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 card. Integrated graphics aren't the best way to play games, they are nice for standalone desktops for office work but not for any gamers. As you allready have a motherboard integrated ATI card, I would stay with ATI to limit driver problems, and buy a better graphic card. ATI x1600 are quite cheap out there, if you want to invest some more get an ATI x1800XT with 512 MB RAM or even an ATI x1900.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 5:05 am

"Nvidia has overtaken the market."

Really?

Emericanized · Post by **Emericanized** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:43 am

Hey thanks for the quick response everyone! really appreciated!

I remember when i first got the pc a while back and was wondering about the card i googled it and looked around to try to learn about it! The card was sadly the one "corner" i cut haha with the computer. I didnt have the money at the time to afford anything other than stock.

ive been lookin into and saving up for a while haha so hopefully ill get a new one soon. I also noticed battle for middle earth 2 runs a little slow... doesnt crach or chop but its just sloooow.

I havent noticed the pc running too warm! Its pretty well cooled! i took a look inside the case, i dont have any compressed air but ill remembe to pick some up and make sure its well dusted!
one question though!
anaximander: by page file size, are you talking resolution? if so, it was originally set to the 800x600 i set it up last night when i noticed....

thanks again and take care!

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:36 am

No, no. The page file is what we call "virtual memory." It's a large file set aside on your hard drive to be used as though it were RAM. The page will typically only be used if you run out of available RAM. This can happen if you have a lot of programs running in the background hogging up your memory, or if one of your programs happens to have a memory leak in it.

I'm going to have to agree with Lucita, though. It's most likely the integrated video card causing the problem. I'm afraid I didn't realize that the card was integrated onto your motherboard when I first read your post.

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:50 am

Had to Google it too...but as I am using ATI products too, it was quite obvious that it had to be an onboard shared memory card.

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:36 am

I have exactly the same video card and my other specs are lower (I'm on a laptop), but VTM:B does not crash on me a lot (it does occasionally, yes, after several hours of gameplay). So I think boosting virtual memory, as I did, could help.

If your planning on using that computer mainly for games however, another card might be in order.

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:25 pm

I'm an Nvidia man myself, so I don't much about the ATI cards. A couple good agp cards from Nvidia are the 6600 GT and the 6800 GT. The 6800 has more memory and a better GPU, but as you would expect it's a little more pricy. If price is not an issue the best agp card Nvidia has out right now (and the last agp card they will ever make) is the 7800 GT. Of course, if you have a PCIE slot, go for the 7600 or 7900.

I'm not sure what the ATI equivilants are, so I can't recommend any products from that line.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:50 pm

Hey Lestat, since you have similar machines and yours is running Bloodlines well, why not suggest some drivers?
Persoanlly the Omega drivers work best for me and from what I have heard most PCs, but I don't know much about gaming on Laptops.

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:56 am

[QUOTE=Acleacius]Hey Lestat, since you have similar machines and yours is running Bloodlines well, why not suggest some drivers?
Persoanlly the Omega drivers work best for me and from what I have heard most PCs, but I don't know much about gaming on Laptops.[/QUOTE]Well I'm still using the original driver and only my card is the same.
The big difference is that my computer is a laptop and I need to get any driver updates through the laptop company and not through the card maker. So any advice would be useless...

Emericanized · Post by **Emericanized** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:48 pm

thanks for all the help! it seems to be running quite a lot smoother so far! hasnt crashed yet! i havent gotten very far!

just a little laggy during fights and near the pier... i can live with taht though... i increased the pagefile size

umm not sure if i had a good grasp! the minimum recommended was 2 MB and the recommended was 2967 MB so i put the max to 3000... the min i had no idea so i put it at 1000 lol.....

with 2 gigs ram does that figure make sense?

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:35 am

[QUOTE=Emericanized]thanks for all the help! it seems to be running quite a lot smoother so far! hasnt crashed yet! i havent gotten very far!

just a little laggy during fights and near the pier... i can live with taht though... i increased the pagefile size

umm not sure if i had a good grasp! the minimum recommended was 2 MB and the recommended was 2967 MB so i put the max to 3000... the min i had no idea so i put it at 1000 lol.....

with 2 gigs ram does that figure make sense?[/QUOTE]

If I remember correctly the best size is 1.5 times the original size ? You can state max and min as the as same, so it won't be to fragmented.

Emericanized · Post by **Emericanized** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 1:28 pm

thanks! so if i put it back to the system controlled size and reboot the comp will it show me the original size? because i cant remeber what it is haha! or is that the same thing as the recommended size....

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:19 pm

Eh original size is your 2 Gig RAM.

Emericanized · Post by **Emericanized** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:21 pm

ahhhh haha

very good very good

makes sense!