Just went to an i3 with "Intel HD" whatever that means. Terrible glitchy graphics no matter what resolution. Nice frame rates and real pretty scenery/water but text and icons are funny and I'm occasionally rolling over obstacles that just aren't there. Kinda hoped a major upgrade would help. Just made it worse. Maybe I'll try to get the old machine back on line.
Actually the last machine had one of those integrated vid chips. And about half the resources. Considering what's listed as system requirements I figure it should at least resolve properly at 720. Nope. I had though maybe a driver issue but it looks like I'm up to date there and with DirectX. And it looks like everything save some specific text renders just fine.
Been on the game for years. Never used a high end system. Every upgrade gets more problematic. I'm done blaming the machines/ISP/sun spots...
Thanks for the input. I didn't see many references to cards and figured it was worth mentioning. I'm about to drop ah anyhow so I'm not gonna bother with any more hardware. Too bad a game that once ran just fine on a 486 still needs all this support.
that i3 with "intel hd graphics" means the video chip which used to be built onto the mobo like your old time box is now embedded into the cpu. it's faster and better in many ways than the old mobo based chips but, it's nowhere near being in the same league as a dedicated video card any more than the old mobo based chip. that has been the case for at least 15 years.
you can buy $300 laptops that are 10x more powerful than the computers i used to run games like delta force on, but they may as well be paperweights trying to run something as simple as civilization 4 or battlefield 3. unfortunately with the competition in the console market and the demand for photo realistic graphics and multiplayer capacity, what used to be a relatively long term low cost hobby, is now a money pit that requires people wanting to game on their computers to choose between spending money on upgrades every 1 to 2 years just to stay abreast of the hardware demands or quit computer gaming.
if the truth be told, nobody, even the people who look back at the "good ole days" claiming they don't care about graphics quality, wants to step back to 8, 16 or even 32 bit graphics.
