. . . . . . . . Why I've Ignored Them

Some GS members may notice that from among the types of message threads that I normally participate in, certain ones will be ignored completely. I happen to like the English language just as it is. My PC's keyboard has at least 104 keys, including two for shifting to upper case (the proper name for capitals, as I'm sure my regular readers know). IMO, it's not at all practical to attempt message writing in forums using a cell phone's keypad.

So, if you see anyone writing messages using a complete keyboard, but ignoring half of the keys, and choosing illiterate versions of goofy (l33t) spelling, I don't read those messages, else I would be tempted to break the TOS with flames for insulting my language. Even if it's merely stupid-looking spelling errors, I'll ignore the messages, because either the writer is too young or too ignorant to get any benefit from my reply, or is fully aware how terrible of a speller he/she is, but chooses not to use any spell-checking.

* Don't waste time in 3D games using integrated graphics *

*Author* *The-Kiwi* Joined: 07 May 2001

This originally appeared on the Self-help Tech Support Forum at Bioware, and is not a matter of opinion. This is easily verified by benchmark tests for the onboard chips at reputable sites, readily reached through a simple search, using Google or any popular 'Net search engine.

Logged in as: *The-Kiwi* Art and Graphics Engine (there've been a couple of edits to S-C's original, and those already appeared on BioWare's Forums)

* You won't be able to run NWN2 on integrated graphics *

*Author* *s-c* Game Owner

(GameSpot's Editor is broken today, and won't handle a Quoted Block correctly, so blame the bad formatting on them, not on me.)

| OK, a lot of people seem not to get this, so I thought I'd make a new thread.

| (Q) What's integrated graphics?
| (A) Anything with the word "Intel" in it, or pretty much any graphics chipset maker besides ATI or Nvidia. Or the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 or 200m. Or Nvidia's GeForce 6100 or 6150. These aren't graphics cards, but small graphics solutions built into the (Chipset on the) motherboard.

| (Q) Wasn't one of these originally on the official supported list?
| (A) Theoretically, the ATI and nVidia IGP's run the game. But with the large graphical load NWN2 puts on the GPU (beyond Oblivion-level), there's NO WAY one of these things is going to be able to render the game fast enough for you to actually play it. (Yes, the NF6100 appeared on one list or another for a time.)

| (Q) Well, what now?
| (A) If you have a laptop -- oops. Not much you can do. But a desktop, unless you're really unfortunate, should still have a slot on the motherboard that you can plug a graphics card into. You have to figure out if that slot is AGP or PCI-E, and buy the appropriate card.

| (Q) How can I tell if it's AGP or PCI-E?
| (A) If your current graphics solution is the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 or Nvidia GeForce 6100 or Nvidia GeForce 6150, it's PCI-E. Otherwise, either look in your manual or find out what your motherboard chipset is and google it.

| (Q) What card should I buy?
| (A) Well, read the other threads here (about that). Note that if you have an AGP slot, you may have to pay a premium of $50 or more to get a card with equivalent performance. Note too that if you buy a powerful card, you may well need to upgrade your power supply as well.

| /Edited By s-c on 09/26/06 17:38/

According to a relatively recent article published on a PC Hardware site, as part of a review of the lowest powered video options, including IGPs, the author claimed to have read some sales figures for the desktop PC market in 2006 that showed fewer than one PC in ten had a discrete video card. Supposedly, over 90 % of current sales were systems offering only onboard video chips.

That 90 % figure has been accurate for laptops, practically from the beginnings of that category of personal computer. Of the remaining 10 % of laptops, a similar one in ten ratio, approximately, represents the number that can have the video circuit boards replaced to upgrade the performance.

Intel's chipsets are the ones used in the majority of the cheap no-video-card desktop systems, and Intel refused to add the T&L capability to their chips until late in 2006 (the X3100), and even then, offered no drivers to enable that function until now (and the drivers they did make available just don't work). ATI had offered a far better onboard chip than anyone else, but with the merger of ATI with AMD, discontinued development of the chipsets for Intel PCs (the bigger market), although there are still excellent ATI IGPs (at least compared to Intel) for AMD-powered PCs.

Most gamers seem not to realize the differences exist

Because I have seen so many, constantly repeated, comparisons of Apples vs. shovels performance comments (yes, worse than Apples and Oranges), here is a relatively current listing of a few of the popular games, arranged in difficulty order. In this list, it is graphics that counts, and the highest demand is the farthest toward the end. Only Crysis, NWN2, & Oblivion are down there with Supreme Commander.

These rankings of games by graphics requirements can be verified by sampling the Toms Hardware VGA Charts for similar games.

. . Compared Game Req's, Difficulty Order

Game ..... Minimum... Minimum...Recomm.... Recomm .... Graphic
Name ..... CPU Spd ... RAM .... CPU Spd.... RAM ....... Card

W o W..... 800 MHz... 512 MBs...1.5 GHz.. 1 GB ...... GF2 32 MB

GTA Vice.. 800 MHz... 128 MBs.. na GHz .. na MBs .... GF3 32 MB
City

Guild..... 800 MHz... 256 MBs.. 1.0 GHz.. 512 MBs ... GF3 32 MB
Wars

Unreal.... 1.0 GHz... 128 MBs.. 1.2 GHz.. 256 MBs ... GF3 32 MB
2004

KotOR ... 1.0 GHz... 128 MBs...1.6 GHz.. 512 MBs ... Dx9 32 MB

Far Cry .. 1.0 GHz... 256 MBs.. 2.3 GHz.. 512 MBs ... GF3 64 MB

Civ 4 .... 1.2 GHz... 256 MBs.. ?.? GHz.. ???? MBs .. Dx9 64 MB

AoE III .. 1.4 GHz... 256 MBs.. ?.? GHz.. ???? MBs .. GF3 64 MB

Doom3..... 1.5 GHz... 384 MBs.. 2.0 GHz.. 512 MBs ... GF3 64 MB

Call of... 1.4 GHz... 512 MBs.. 2.5 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. GF3 64 MB
Duty 2

Titan .... 1.8 GHz....512 MBs...3.0 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. GF3 64 MB
Quest

Company ... 2.0 GHz...512 MBs...na ...... na ........ GF3 64 MB
of Heroes

Quake 4 .. 2.0 GHz... 512 MBs...na GHz .. na MBs .... GF3 64 MB

FEAR ..... 1.7 Ghz .. 512 MBs . 3.0 GHz . 1024 MBs .. Dx8 64 MB

C&C3 Tib . 1.6 Ghz .. 512 MBs . 2.2 GHz . 1024 MBs .. Dx8 64 MB

Far Cry .. 1.0 Ghz .. 256 MBs . n/a GHz . n/a. MBs .. Dx9 64 MB

Dreamfall..1.6 GHz....512 MBs ..2.5 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. Dx9 64 MB

Prey ..... 2.0 GHz....512 MBs ..2.5 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. Dx9 64 MB

BF2 ...... 1.7 GHz....512 MBs...na ...... na ........ Dx9 128 MB

BF2142 ... 1.7 GHz....512 MBs...2.6 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. Dx9 128 MB

JE-SE .... 1.8 GHz....512 MBs...3.0 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. Dx9 128 MB

SupCom ... 1.8 GHz....512 MBs...3.0 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. Dx9 128 MB

Oblivion .. 2.0 GHz...512 MBs...3.0 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. R 9 128 MB

NWN2 ...... 2.4 GHz...512 MBs...3.0 GHz.. 1024 MBs .. R 9 128 MB

Crysis .... 2.8 GHz...768 MBs...3.4 GHz.. 1.5 GBs ... GF 6600 GPU
...................................................... R X800 GTO

(Can't compare System Info to Game Requirements to decide on a game's purchase?)

The warning label on the game box didn't seem to name a lot that you could understand, and the clerk couldn't help you, or you don't trust what he said?

Your original receipts and manual named most of that information (the component names and descriptions asked for on the warning label), if you can locate that paperwork. Also, your operating system includes its own System Information summary report.

If only the System Requirements Lab would stay up to date, so we could rely on them, it'd be really great, but they will not. They have a web site at which they collect the Games' Requirements for a great many games, and offer a free test to compare a visitor's computer to each game's official requirements. But far too often, they have old and outdated lists instead of the latest, so any "pass -no-pass" results are quite doubtful. But you can save the SR Test report (it will identify most of your PC's game- needed parts fairly well).

There are several free programs that perform inventory- type services, the simplest of which is CPUz. My own favorite site for software such as CPUz is from Major Geeks (link further down). The Crucial Memory web site had offered an even simpler survey of your PC's components, and did name one thing that might be slightly more difficult for a beginner to determine, or to remember. It was able to tell you whether your video card is running in an AGP or a PCI-e slot (the functionality of the tests on that site may have become less useful recently).

The most detailed reports are offered by Belarc and by Everest Home Analysis.

If you bought a game without understanding the requirements, and it won't run for you, when you really feel certain that you had bought a powerful enough computer, recently enough, to run just about any game that there is, then it's past time now to learn about what's inside that machine. A caution is in order here. Ordinary business quality PC hardware is less powerful than is required for games. Inexpensive PCs are worse than the basic business boxes in how little of the game software they can run. Laptops as a group are generally not suitable for gaming, either.

Crucial Memory http://www.crucial.com
Major Geeks http://www.majorgeeks.com
System Requirements Lab http://www.srtest.com

A Sample of what all can be pertinent here:

Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Type: Athlon 64 / Pentium / dual core
Processor Speed: ?.? Ghz (or AMD Performance Number)
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP # ?
System RAM: ? ? GBs (or MBs, if less than 1024)
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those are supported)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon x1650 Pro / Geforce 7600 GS
Video Card onboard RAM: ??? MBs
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.?? (use numbers, not the word latest)
Power Supply Make, Model, and 12 volt amperage
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Model:
Sound Card Driver Version: ?.?? (again, numbers)

There is an additional item that helps identify a problem with performance, and it is generated by the DxDiag utility in DirectX, the graphics display portion of Windows. If the "used" amount in the Windows Page File is large, there are too many background processes running.

(What you can expect to find in here)

Just more of the same thing that you can read if you track my new replies at GameSpot, that's what. PCs are my hobby, and gaming is my excuse for spending time and money on the hardware. The messages I choose to offer answers to in the forums are generally about the stuff I am most interested in, such as 3D Video Cards, so there will be a lot of that in here.

Now, don't get excited if this isn't what anyone else here offers for their own blogging space; it's what I think could be useful, and therefore worth my time organizing it for publication here. I'll end the first installment with a proposed table of contents covering what all I may eventually add.

Because some of the members here have computer and game troubles that I've had experience with, one of the earlier sections will be about PC Trouble Shooting, and the most recent game I've been playing will be used as an example. FYI, that's been Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2.

Before that, I will discuss the things to look for when going Video Card Shopping, and the waste of time it would be to buy a card to use in a plain PCI slot, and similarly, trying to use onboard graphics for modern 3D games. At some point, I'll cover some of the history of the dedicated Video Card, as well as of my personal involvement with computers generally, and about building my own systems as well.

I've repeated in several replies at GameSpot and elsewhere, a particular semi- philosophical rant against using subjective terms of superlative nature, and I will repeat that here, eventually, I am certain. In a more practical section, you will learn how to easily identify the specific components inside of your own Personal Computer, and why you need to be able to do that, as well as a simple chart showing the relationship of the System Requirements of various popular games.

For any of the readers here at GameSpot who have visited other gaming forums at which I've participated in a major way, you are likely to see "reruns". I have reused some of my essays from the start of becoming a gaming forum regular at least once, as I've moved from one place to another as my primary base. For the most part, if you were even semi-regular on BioWare's NWN2 forums, then you may have seen my name, since my threads were so popular there as the basis for their "Sticky Threads" at the top. That, however, was prior to being messed with too many times by Stanislav the Woo- woo from Obsidian (name changed to protect the guilty).

1. How to identify what's inside the main system unit, in order to be certain your PC can run this or that game with decent image quality and playable frame rates.
2. A few games' requirements for comparison, ranked by the Video Card Required.
3. Overall poor performance from onboard video chips.
4. Terrible game performance from Video Cards running on the plain PCI bus.
5. A basic guide to New Video Card shopping.
6. Choosing useful comparison criteria for computer performance discussions.
7. The first steps in performing trouble shooting diagnostics.
8. Where to learn how to perform a proper "Clean Boot".
9. Sample FAQ for the NWN-2 game's trouble shooting.
10. The Laptop PC Conundrum.
11. Upgrading options for some Laptop PCs.
12. The compromise between getting plenty of cooling and dealing with lots of noise from a game system.
13. Dealing with an overheating problem.
14. In case you wanted to know, where the author's computer start began.
15. Building my own PCs back in the day.
16. A little video performance history from AGP1 to PCIe.
17. Should you stick with gaming consoles instead of having to deal with PCs' many hardware differences when used as gaming platforms?
18. Philosophical differences between gamers happiest with PCs versus those who will be better off with console gaming, and how to encourage more of them to cross over to join us.