SE5 Incompatible with Matrox P750? |
I've been reading some Iain Banks lately, and having had a certain amount of fun with SEIV years ago, I thought that I would check out SEV. Yeah, I know, I should have tried the demo first, but given my experinces with SEIV, I figured that there was no way I wouldn't like it enough to be worth the price.
I ran SE5 1.00 long enough to register the serial number, then applied the 1.71 patch. Unfortunately, the resulting game seems to be useless on my computer, an Opteron/Win2KSP4 system with a Matrox P750 AGP graphics card. Even with the latest firmware and drivers, if I enable and use 3D acceleration, my system locks up solid, needing a hard reset, within a few seconds of the main game display opening up. If I inhibit 3D acceleration with DXdiag, or if I configure the game to emulate 3D using RGB, things are so slow as to be unplayable, but at least it doesn't crash.
Is ANYONE able to play this game with Matrox P750 or similar graphics cards? I know that they're not considered "gamers cards", but they're quite common.
Re: SE5 Incompatible with Matrox P750?
I know a tiny bit about trouble shooting.
What are your system specs?
CPU speed, RAM, etc?
What kind of Opteron do you have?
AMD site mentions two types, dual core and quad core, and that they were made for servers/workstations.
There was a dual core problem with SE5 at one time, but was apparently patched a while back by the looks of one topic on dual cores turned up in a forum search.
I also found that Matrix P750 has 64MB of DDR RAM, which is plenty of RAM for SEV, but I can't tell if it supports 3D acceleration or not.
I have heard that DDR RAM on a video card can slow things down, but I am unsure if it could cause such problems as locking up a computer.
Have you played other games with 3D graphics using the same video card?
Does dxdiag show problems when testing DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound, or DirectMusic?
Does your soundcard support MP3 playback?
Finally, have you thought about posting this problem over on the
Technical Support forum?
Re: SE5 Incompatible with Matrox P750?
I was asking some questions on a forum run by someone who knows a good amount of stuff about PC hardware and gaming, and two things were mentioned.
1: When it comes to computer games, the Opterons can run games but are not great performers when compared to desktop CPUs.
(edit)
2: The Matrox P750 is mainly a 2D card, apparently meant for office and CAD (?) use, that it has only basic multi-media support, and that it is a basic gaming performer, but it does support 3D acceleration for Dirext8 support.(/edit)
Edit: extra info.
Other stuff mentioned to do/not do.
Do not emulate 3D, it is to slow for gaming.
OpenGL will not work with SE5, because SE5 requires Direct3D.
You must use full 3D acceleration.
Check the control panel for the Matrox P750, set it from 2D to 3D environment.
Enable Direct3D TL HAL mode (or at least Direct3D HAL?)
If you have it set for "extended desktop" (more than one monitor), you must undo it.
If the option for extended desktop is not listed in the control panel for the video card, then right-click on desktop > Properties > Settings, undo extended desktop.
They also want to know what kind of sound card you have, or if you have sound at all.
(In personal experience, I have had games act funny because of sound issues)
If you do not know, then could you post your dxdiag?
If anyone is curious, here is the the forum I have been asking questions on.
http://www.blindnero.com/forums/phpBB3/index.php
and the topic I made there regarding troubleshooting this problem (partly due to not having much else to do)
http://www.blindnero.com/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=335
The person who runs it is fairly good at dealing with problems relating to PC hardware/software/settings.
Re: SE5 Incompatible with Matrox P750?
In the setup menu, try setting video memory to safe instead of auto.
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