Intel 845GL motherboard / directx issue... I'm trying to fix a friends computer so their daughter can play Sims2. At first they thought the pc was too slow, but it is a compaq s5000nx, which has a 2.5 Ghz celeron cpu, 128 meg, built in video. I upgraded the ram to 384 meg, flashed the bios to 3.24 (phoenix), and downloaded 3 different intel video drivers (6.14.10.3619, 6.14.10.3762_cert, and 6.14.10.3943). None of these will work with Sims2, although the support for intel says the video is compatible and the support board for Sims2 says the video should work if you have at least a 2.0 ghz processor and 256 meg. I keep getting the 'no directx compatible video cards found' message. The earliest video driver (3619) at least had the "AGP Texture Acceleration" button enabled, where the others were grayed out. The motherboard is a Trigem Glendale motherboard, i845GL chipset, with no AGP slot. From other postings I see that PCI video cards really suck for Sims2. But I don't know how much they want to dump into this to get it to work. Any hope of getting this built in video to work? Thanks Steve
Its the intergrated video, he needs to move to a nicer PCI video card, get a ATi Radeon Serries, like a 9200 that has PCI support, it will be 100x better than anything built in. Also the Celeron processor isnt helping moving to a real Pentinum 4 or a AMD XP/64 would be a good move if they are ready to get a new pc.
The Intel integrated cards had a lot of difficulty for the game, even though the 82845G/GL was supported. Even if you can only get PCI cards for it, it's better than the 82845 (which is what I had before September when I built my new computer.) There are two which seem to work: PCI Radeon 9200 and PCI Geforce FX5200. Each has its downsides and upsides, but they balance out to being about the same (especially since Nvidia came out with a better driver which works better than the 61 76 and 61 77 drivers for the FX card.) However, one of the things that was noticed with the directX compatibility problem is that sometimes it had nothing to do with cards, motherboards or drivers, but was due to a faulty direct X installation. Manager Josh has the instructions for fixing that somewhere here on the board. (It's quite lengthy, or I'd include it here.) Some programs can get away with it even though it's faulty, but for TS2 it's a more important issue.
Kat and Geek (first name basis already...?), THanks for the tips. I went out to newegg and ordered a radeon 9200 with 128meg memory, pci, for $56 after shipping. Should resolve the problem. I realize the celeron is not quite as good as the p4, but this should at least get it going. I had uninstalled and re-installed the directx, but to no avail... Thanks again. Steve
2.5 GHz Celeron 384 Megabytes RAM - PC2700 21.1GB Free Disk Space 32.2 GB Total Disk Sapphire ATI 9200 Video Card (PCI Version) with 128 Megabytes Video Driver: 6.14.10.6476 Directx: 9.0c Windows XP Home (Service Pack 1, build 2600) Sims CD Version (4 disks) The system is a core Compaq S5000NX pc, with an additional 256 MB memory and a PCI based ATI 9200 Series video card with 128 Meg. I added the video card because I couldn't get the built-in video (Intel Extreme Graphics) to work with Sims 2. Uninstalled Sims 2, Re-installed Sims 2. Tried to run. Got as far as splash screens, then select neighborhood. No matter what I select, the system locks up saying it is loading the neighborhood. But nothing else ever happens. I've given it over an hour, with no results. I then downloaded the game patch for the cd based game, applied that patch, reran the program. No luck - same problem. Found an article about compatibility mode - set it to windows 98/me. Same problem. Just about out of ideas short of wiping the drive and starting over from scratch. Any other suggestions? Thanks Steve
Well, I have it working, sort of... I totally uninstalled the Sims2, following instructions from the eagames website. Then I re-installed it. And now it works, although the sound is very choppy whenever it has to work on something. Of course, it is integrated audio, so a sound blaster card would probably help that also, I would guess. But for now, at least it plays. Thanks Steve
