Rome Total War and Civilization IV on a netbook

[Bateluer]

So I'm installing some games on my eeePC 904HA. Its got a 1.6Ghz Atom, 1GB of RAM, XP Home, and the atrociously bad 945 IGP.

So, obviously, any gaming choices are limited. RTW and Civ4 meet most of the requirements, but I think they may come up short on the video aspect.

Civ 4 wants a "DirectX 9.0c ?compatiable 64 MB video card with hardware T&L & pixel shader"

RTW wants a "GeForce 2/Radeon 72xx series with 64MB VRAM"

Think the Netbook will run them?

 

[nosfe]

sorry to burst your bubble but the gma 945 doesn't have either hardware T&L nor directx 9 compatibility. Even a ton of directx 8 games have problems with it because of no hardware T&L, a feature that was first introduced in the first geforce cards, back in 1999. No chance those games will run.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: nosfe
sorry to burst your bubble but the gma 945 doesn't have either hardware T&L nor directx 9 compatibility. Even a ton of directx 8 games have problems with it because of no hardware T&L, a feature that was first introduced in the first geforce cards, back in 1999. No chance those games will run.

You're not bursting anything.

I didn't buy the netbook for gaming, I just wanted to gain a more full measure of its capabilities. I'm still going to install them both, see how they run. I don't anticipate RTW's battle screens will run well if at all, but the campaign map should fair better. And Civ4 doesn't exactly require a graphics power house.

Though, I also have Civ2 and Civ 3. If those don't run . . . well, then Intel really should let netbook makers use Nvidia's 9300M IGP with the Atom.

 

[nosfe]

they will, as soon as they won't have any more 945 in stock.
btw, you'll probably need this if you want to try games with it. It will allow you to emulate hardware t&l. It usually works
http://www.tommti-systems.de/m...le_3danalyzer-v236.exe

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: nosfe
they will, as soon as they won't have any more 945 in stock.
btw, you'll probably need this if you want to try games with it. It will allow you to emulate hardware t&l. It usually works
http://www.tommti-systems.de/m...le_3danalyzer-v236.exe

What is that?

 

[nosfe]

it fools programs into thinking that your graphics card has hardware t&l
To use it: run program, "Select" and select the exe of the game, select "emulate HW T&L caps" and "force SW TnL" and then click "Run"

I managed to run Heroes5 with that program on a g33 which is only a bit stronger than the 945(though that was on a desktop with a core 2 duo processor, don't think the atom would be able to run it)

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: nosfe
it fools programs into thinking that your graphics card has hardware t&l
To use it: run program, "Select" and select the exe of the game, select "emulate HW T&L caps" and "force SW TnL" and then click "Run"

Works well, I used 3D Analyzer for my Voodoo5 5500 back in the day (it lacked hardware T&L as well, but the system could handle software emulation, but many games had a check for HW T&L).

 

[Bateluer]

Maybe its just me, but I cannot seem to find anyway to increase the amount of RAM that is allocated to the IGP. It seems to be stuck at 8MB. There's nothing in the BIOS to increase it and I don't see any option for it in the Asus software or windows tools.

 

[nosfe]

it should change the amount allocated to the video card automatically. Other then from the bios, there's an option in the video card drivers from intel that lets you set the amount allocated, it's called "Driver Memory Footprint", or something like that.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: nosfe
it should change the amount allocated to the video card automatically. Other then from the bios, there's an option in the video card drivers from intel that lets you set the amount allocated, it's called "Driver Memory Footprint", or something like that.

I saw that, but it only offers Low, Normal, and High. I've seen on desktop bios' where you can actually select the amount of RAM it will use.

 

[nosfe]

i'm guessing that asus didn't intend to sell the eeepc to those that dig inside the bios to tweak it so they just set in on auto, along with a lot of other settings. Don't worry, if the video card needs the memory it'll automatically take it

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: nosfe
i'm guessing that asus didn't intend to sell the eeepc to those that dig inside the bios to tweak it so they just set in on auto, along with a lot of other settings. Don't worry, if the video card needs the memory it'll automatically take it

Its not like its going to make much of a difference regardless.

I did load up CivIV. The game warns you that you're below the minimum spec's and sizes everything to minimums. Oddly, the resolution will not go lower than 1024x768, when the native res of the 904's display is 1024x600. I don't know if this is a limitation of the game, which does support 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios, or a limitation of the GMA950. This leads to an add scrolling effect in the game because it can only display 1024x600 of the screen at a given time, so those extra pixels can be seen by scrolling. Its quite odd and very annoying.

At least you can still play StarCraft and Age of Empires 2.

 

[dougp]

Have you checked any of the netbook sites for the EEE or MSI Wind? They have a lot of good resources for people trying to game on their netbooks.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: dougp
Have you checked any of the netbook sites for the EEE or MSI Wind? They have a lot of good resources for people trying to game on their netbooks.

Don't know of any specific ones, so no.