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Northchild
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 232
Location: New York, USA |
| Morrowind Video Card Sadness (lengthy, maybe OT) |
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Hi all,
I'm posting this here out of sheer frustration, as you might have guessed, the Morrowind site is too clogged to even GET to the forums and I'm guessing that customer service doesn't want to hear from me at this hour.
I'm running on a Athlon 1.1, 512 megs of RAM, Windows XP, and a Hercules Prophet 4500/64 meg card. Bought a new 19" Trinitron monitor mostly for this game. The installation of Morrowind was fine, it doesn't crash. 1024x768 seems to work fine. I am having several problems, like a band of "flicker" that takes up the entire right edge of my display. The performance is kind of slow, there's some redraw problems. Most notably, when I start playing, I can't help but notice that the top of the ocean is very high - the boat that I'm on and all of the crew appears to be entirely underwater.
After updating my BIOS, getting all of the latest drivers for peripheral devices that I haven't paid attention to lately, making sure that the video card drivers are up to date, etc., still having no luck. The readme file didn't mention that the Hercules video card is supported, so I'm guessing that this is the problem.
It really ticks me off... I mean, it's not like I bought a video card from an unknown company or anything. I got this at CompUSA. I understand that it isn't the best card in the world - I didn't spend a whole hell of a lot of money for it. I got it before really getting back into PC games and learning that NVIDIA is pretty much standard. The new Jedi Outcast game works fine and runs swiftly. Would it have killed this software producer to support this video card?
Ok. I'm done ranting. Where should I go from here? I feel comfortable working with PC hardware and use this computer for C++ projects, 3ds max, web development, and so on. The catch is, I haven't built my own system since 386's were cool. Basically, I just want to have something that I know inside and out so that I can upgrade one component without having to upgrade everything. If I were to get a new motherboard/processor/case/video card/sound card/etc, would it be relatively easy to just hook up these hard drives and get by without spending a couple of days re-installing and re-configuring everything? Should I buy this stuff locally at CompUSA or is there a better dealer online that won't be gone the next day if I want to return something? What's the best video card to get and how much does it cost?
I guess the next question is... would it be to my advantage to just get an XBox rather than having to deal with all of this? Do you guys see PC games being replaced by better versions on consoles such as the XBox?
Thanks for any replies. If anyone knows of a workaround for the graphics card problem, I'd be most grateful. For what it's worth, the music in Morrowind is lovely... not $50.00 lovely, but great nonetheless.  |
Fri May 03, 2002 3:16 am |
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SergioCQH
Guest
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Ok, your card is based on the Kyro II chipset, which does NOT support hardware Transform&Lighting, which is a requirement for Morrowind. Get an nVidia card...that's all the advice I can give you. This game was optimized for nVidia's Geforce 3 and 4 cards like nothing else. It comes just short of being made by nVidia themselves. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 3:25 am |
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Guest
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I have the same card and the same problems. F*CK I do not want to buy a new card. I could barely afford the game. There's gotta be another way!!!!! Someone help us!!!!!!!!! PLEASE |
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Fri May 03, 2002 3:46 am |
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Northchild
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 232
Location: New York, USA |
(sigh)
Yeah, I double-checked the specs on the box, which I should have done when I was at the store. It just didn't occur to me that the game wouldn't support a mainstream video card with 64mb RAM that I purchased just a month ago. I've learned more about chipsets tonight than I ever wanted to know. Grrrr.
Pricewatch says that a company called "ComputerBrain" is selling a TI4600 for around 300 bucks. Is that a good price and will I have problems if I need to return it for some reason (never shopped mail-order for this stuff, always preferred having someone to yell at if things didn't work - grin). |
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Fri May 03, 2002 4:16 am |
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Guest
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NOOOOO..... That's too much money. THERE has got to be another way!!!. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 4:19 am |
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Bismil
Guest
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Have you guys tried lowering the resolution? |
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Fri May 03, 2002 4:22 am |
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Guest
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YEAH, but thanks for trying. Any one else? COME ON!!!!!!! |
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Fri May 03, 2002 4:23 am |
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Northchild
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 232
Location: New York, USA |
Found a workaround for the card posted at the Morrowind forums. The author wrote:
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I had the same problem with my Prophet 4500 Kyro II TV-Out and found a solution to the problem.. all you have to do is to go to the menu for your card under "3D-Optimisation" and then under the Direct 3D tab select Custom.. now click on the Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer and make sure that all 3 checkboxes under it are marked enabled.. this worked fine for me and I'm now running MW on 800x600 with 4XFSAA smoothly..
Hope this was helpful for all you with the prophet card.. have fun playing the game! =)
-----------
I tried this. The game works, but that's all that I can say for it. The framerate on my machine is horrible (I'd say less than 15fps). It's simply not worth playing.
I'm going to hang onto Morrowind until I update some of my hardware, buy an NVidia, etc. Still pissed off. PC gaming may or may not be a more expensive hobby than... say... drugs, but it sure feels that way some times.
If anyone has any advice on building systems from scratch, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe a moderator can move this over to a general forum, (if there aren't lotsa threads about this already posted). |
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Fri May 03, 2002 5:35 am |
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Spawnster75
Guest
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nope don't spend $300 for a GF4Ti4600. though it's great but i'll recommend the upcoming GF4Ti4200 for the price of $170++ or less. once u overclock this little baby u'll be getting a performance equivalent to a GF4Ti4400.  Hallelujah! |
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Fri May 03, 2002 5:40 am |
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Guest
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I'd have to disagree with you, I totalled it up, and my PC gaming hobby is more expensive than my cocaine, heroin, pot and qualuude habits combined   |
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Fri May 03, 2002 5:43 am |
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GhanBuriGhan
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 208
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quote:
Originally posted by Northchild
I tried this. The game works, but that's all that I can say for it. The framerate on my machine is horrible (I'd say less than 15fps). It's simply not worth playing.
Did you try turning off the shadows, for all I heard that is THE biggest performace killer in the game. Your system should run it a little better than 15 fps on average, though I would suspect that 15 fps in crowded areas are probably to be expected. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 5:55 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
quote:
Originally posted by Northchild
It just didn't occur to me that the game wouldn't support a mainstream video card
Kyro II and mainstream video card< No. That is really not true.
By buying it you supported producer that tried and probably is trying to enter on market with good video cards. You did right thing, it is necessary to fight against NVidia monopoly, but now you see that it costs something. Kyro II is simply not mainstream card and in some important ways it differs from NVidia/ATI pair.
Kyros architecture is in many ways much cleverer than Nvidias but it doesnt support all things that NVidia does. And say it here openly - do not implement T&L in Kyro II GPUs was huge mistake and this mistake deserve punishment.
Last edited by Danicek on Fri May 03, 2002 1:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:59 am |
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Aramas
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 25 Apr 2002
Posts: 38
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Anyone would think that NVidia cards are the only ones supported
I seem to recall a couple of ATI cards being mentioned in the system specs too, but NVidia fanboys just start twitching, their eyes glaze over and drool starts running from the corners of their mouths whenever ATI is mentioned. It's better than admitting that there's an alternative to their overpriced GF4's.
The ATI Radeon 8500 64MB DDR can be had for under $140. The 8500LE 128MB DDR has similar performance and can be found even cheaper. If losing a few fps doesnt make your groin go all floppy then a 8500LE 64MB can be had for under $100. Bear in mind that the 8500 is the only chip that fully supports DX8.1, so it's more future proof than the GF4, which is only a GF3 on speed.
On the other hand, you can wait a month and pay more for a GF4 4200 that's faster than the 8500 but looks like crap in 2D, 3D (blurry textures with FSAA) and DVD playback. Of course, if you want to use anisotropic filtering then the 4200 will also be slower than the 8500. But hey, it's a fricken GEFORCE fricken FOUR, right? And that's NVIDIA UBERNESS so it RoXXorz, hmmkay?!
Anyone else remember the 3dfx vs. TNT fanboy wars of a few years ago? The underdog won that time. It's good to see smug, overpriced NVidia has got some competition  |
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Fri May 03, 2002 1:20 pm |
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Vault_Dweller
Guest
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By the way, it runs 'perfect' on my Geforce 3 Ti200, which I bought online for less than $150 after shipping. Try pricewatch.com. The Radeon cards are a good buy also, but you need the 8500 series to see the nice water effects (they're incredible) i believe. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 1:52 pm |
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