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12201
July 16th, 2006 02:00
Games Compatible with Intel GMA 950
Hello all!
I have read several other messages in this forum about Intel's GMA 950 cards and they don't quite answer my questions. I have recently purchased the Inspiron E1405 with Intel GMA 950 graphics and installed and played the Sims 2. It installs perfectly fine and I can actually play it for several days/weeks before having any problems. Whenever the problems do occur, the game freezes, shuts down, and turns my screen into a negative type display. A pop-up message appears that says there is something wrong with the almrnt5.dll video driver. Whenever I restart the computer, the coloring and font is fine but the wide screen display is alittle off and makes the display shorter. After a simple system restore and downloading the new and latest drivers for the card the screen display is fixed. I've read that the Intel GMA 950 is not a gaming video card but whenever I could play, the graphics weren't choppy or slow, only this the crash problem occurred after a week or so of playing. Is there any way to play the game without going through all that hassle? Also my computer only came with DirectX 8.0 and I had to install the new DirectX 9.0. I haven't tried playing the game with DirectX 9.0 yet. It said on Intel's website that it's a 3D graphics card and even though it's integrated, there is still a PCI x 16 port inside the motherboard for updates. I have a 1.83 Intel Core Duo processor, 1 GB memory, and a 60 GB hard drive. The game is installed on an external hard drive that is connected through a 2.0 USB port. Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks!
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GuruChaz
35 Posts
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July 16th, 2006 05:00
donnor
18 Posts
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July 17th, 2006 14:00
You should also check Intel's website for the latest (if they offer) and sometimes they do drivers for that chipsets video. Often times there are fixes already in place in their newer drivers.
Also always run the latest Directx from MS. I believe 9.0c is the latest release. As far as gaming is concerned. Not it is not the first pick but you should be able to play the Sims 2 and World of Warcraft without major problems. It is not going to run anything higher than that without some major visual sacrifices to get enough frames per second.
It is not the end of the world and will do for a casual non hard core gamer. The only downfall unfortunately is that it is the only option with that system as you cannot add in the X1400 or similar offering that was a choice with that laptop as it has no dedicate port.
Also note, play a game that is installed on an external drive will work, but the performance will be iffy at times due to latency with read and write seek times. I find that on my USB2.0 7200RPM external it is like night and day with the performance. Slower load times because the drives raw throughput may be as much as 10 to 15MBps slower, let alone the cpu utilization from the USB interface.
Try to run the game off the internal drive if you can.
Message Edited by donnor on 07-17-200610:42 AM