Author Topic: Can this system work? (Read 335 times)

Ghastly · « **on:** June 13, 2007, 07:11:34 AM »

One of my old Warbirds squadmates wants to fly AH with us, but when he went to load AH, it simply crashes. It's no wonder, I had him send me the output from Sysinfo and this is his machine:

CPU x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~2528 Mhz
(Celeron???)
Video VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
Audio Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller
Modem PCI Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP
RAM 384 MB

It's an Emachines system. I've never even heard of that Video card, but according to VIA it has

Quote

Full Software support including Microsoft DirectX 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 and Open GL support

http://de.viatech.com/de/products/chipsets/p4-series/pn800/

Add to a video card I've never even heard of, integrated sound, low memory, and what is 99% certainly a WinModem on a dialup connection, and my gut says:

"No way in Hades"

Skuzzy, do you guys have any reason to feel that it should work?

He's in Washington state and I'm in Boston, and I hesitate to tell him to start downloading updated drivers (presuming we can figure out where to get them and what's even an update) when from what I can see, it's a probable non-event no matter how much we throw at it.

But I'd feel like a fool saying "No way Jose" without checking here first.

NOT · « **Reply #1 on:** June 13, 2007, 07:15:04 AM »

never happen.

NOT

Krusty · « **Reply #2 on:** June 13, 2007, 11:29:06 AM »

Nope. Emachines = BAD!

For that setup, here's the major flaws:

1) You can't expect to get any decent performance with less than 512MB RAM.

2) On top of that, the Celeron will really hurt you when trying to run the game. It would be possible, but wouldn't be ideal.

3) The video card flat-out won't work. Period. It's a 2D card. AH is a 3D game. Also this type of card uses pre-existing system RAM (cutting into your 384MB).

I wouldn't even try it on that machine if I were you.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #3 on:** June 13, 2007, 12:42:00 PM »

The VIA/S3G chip has broken hardware acceleration. The only way to make it run is to disable hardware vertex processing, but it will still be a bit flaky.

The RAM is going to be small problem, but you can trim Aces High II back by turning off skins, using the smallest texture size (128) and running the game at 800x600 resolution.

Needs to be a very lean operating system installation as well.

Krusty · « **Reply #4 on:** June 13, 2007, 12:50:07 PM »

So the S3G actually does 3D? I thought I read it didn't (or maybe I was reading that it's flaky to the point it shouldn't do it?). Good to know!

Ghastly · « **Reply #5 on:** June 13, 2007, 02:41:51 PM »

Thanks guys for the input! I thought as much, but wanted to check before giving him a conclusive thumbs down.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #6 on:** June 13, 2007, 03:31:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
So the S3G actually does 3D? I thought I read it didn't (or maybe I was reading that it's flaky to the point it shouldn't do it?). Good to know!

It will, but it cannot do it with any hardware acceleration and it does not do it well even when it does do it.

There is not an onboard video chip which will do 3D 'well'. They all limp about, some are worse than others. But none of them are any good at it.