ATI RADEON IGP and Far Cry

[juszczec]

Hi folks

My brother got me Far Cry for Christmas. I finally got around to loading it on my laptop in February (big project, 2 months of 80 hour weeks).

It won't run. Poking around ubisoft's website turns up the following graphics chip/card requirements:

"NVIDIA GeForce 2/3/4/FX families ( NVIDIA based cards must have ForceWare drivers 53.03 or later; GeForce 2 and GeForce 4 MX cards do not support all graphics features)

or

"ATI Radeon 8500/9000 families (ATI Radeon 9500-9800 XT recommended; ATI-based cards must have Catalyst drivers 3.9 or higher)"

I've got an ATI RADEON IGP 345M card.

Has anyone heard of a way to make Far Cry think this is one of the supported ones?

Mark

 

[Heyyou27]

You can't make Far Cry think you have a different videocard; simply put, yours is crap. It's an ancient card that has no chance of playing new games.

 

[sojrner]

wow man, don't sugar coat it... tell him like it is, he can take it. :lol:

some truth is there though... even though you can do alot of things to hack software, your hardware is fixed in many ways... you wont be able to play it AFAIK.

 

[juszczec]

You can't make Far Cry think you have a different videocard; simply put, yours is crap. It's an ancient card that has no chance of playing new games.

Fair enough.

Now the question is - what does the video card lack?

Mark

 

[Zaleb]

There aren't too many ways to "upgrade" existing cards, if I understand you correctly. Instead you must purchase a new video card. Unfortunately, it is very difficult/impossible to install a new video card on a laptop, as opposed to a desktop computer.

 

[sojrner]

good question, and I'm not sure what it lacks... I have a friend w/ the same mobo-video in his lappy and he has issues w/ many games including farCry. It is a hardware issue though... not sure what can be done, you may have to google it up to find what it lacks.

 

[the_guru]

Your graphics card lacks some essential 3D-functions that is required to play FarCry. There is nothing to do about it. A new computer is the only thing to solve the problem since you can't upgrade the graphics card on your laptop.

 

[bennyg55]

Simply put
- It doesn't have enough VRAM - if any at all - bandwidth is tiny when using system RAM
- It isn't fast enough
- It lacks the latest features (even if it had them, lacks the power to make them look any good)

My brother's got an IGP 320M in his laptop and it struggles on 2-3 year old games - ie. anything more than Quake 3 (although it can play some passably like GTA:SA)

Games like Quake 4 just give GSOD (grey screen of death) on both his and my laptop with Intel 855GME integrated gfx.

In short, you need a desky for any hardware-killing game newer than Doom3/HL2 - or a laptop that will do the same for 4 times the price

 

[juszczec]

Ok. My current laptop won't cut it. I need a new laptop for work so...

Does anyone know of a laptop out there with a strong enough graphics hardware to support Far Cry?

Mark

 

[Zaleb]

There are options...what's your budget?

 

[juszczec]

Right now, I'm just window shopping. So there is no upper limit.

Realistically, I don't want to pay any more than $1600US

Mark

 

[Zaleb]

If you google "gaming laptop" or "gaming notebook" that'll hopefully lead you to a variety of resources and information. Although a lot of people don't recommend Dell, they have a line of well-reviewed and moderately priced gaming laptops (the XPS series) at dell.com. Alienware also offers expensive, quality gaming laptops. I've heard good things about CyberpowerPC.com

 

[MrCommunistGen]

I'd recommend an ASUS z71v or possibly the more expenisve z70va. The former has a Geforce 6600go and the latter has an x700 Mobility. I configured my z71v @ www.istnc.com for about $1400... of course that was buying my own ram and getting XP at an education discount. I figure you could still put together a reasonable z71v for $1600. If you want to shop around check www.asus.com to find other resellers.
FYI I spent more than a month doing research into different laptops/configs/stores to get what I wanted at the lowest possible price...

Of course I'd still recommend getting a desktop. For about $600 I could probably configure a complete tower (without monitor, KB, or mouse) that would be faster than a $1600 z71v.
-mcg

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

MrComGen's on the right track and I like his suggestions too.

I personally would add mid-range laptops from companies like Gateway and Dell. Even in Canada good solid gamers (laptop-wise) can be hade for bout that much money in Canadian funds, and they sport things like the GF6800GO, GF7800GO , GF7600GO, MR-X1400 and X1600.

Hard to pass on a 2GHZ PentiumM (or CoreDUO) or Turion with one of those cards. Should hold you through well into 2008-2009 IMO. Of course as time goes on the feature' slide is going to keep move closer to off, but at least it'll still be playable.

But remember, laptops are usually mediocre gamers, Tey'll do it, but not as smoothly as a desktop most times, and upgrading is more expensive (be it SODIMMs or 2.5" drives).