SiS 740 integrated video

[gunfighter2004]

Well, bought this computer last Spring. Has an Athlon 1800, 512 meg RAM, and a SiS 740 integrated video card. Plays CMBO OK but everything is too dark. It won't play CMBB at all. Will I have this same problem with the Africa Korps Game? If I have to buy a new card, any recommendations? You know it's a good game when your considering buying a new card just to play.

[Schrullenhaft]

If you have a problem with CMBB, then you will have a problem with CMAK.

There will probably be no way of fixing the 'darkness' that you see in CMBO. That's the gamma level that the drivers are programmed for. Sometimes a utility like PowerStrip can adjust these settings, but it is fairly rare.

You can download the latest drivers from SiS (Category: 'graphics'; Sub Category: 'Integration Chipset'; Product: 'SiS740'; OS System: whatever you have, I assume it is Windows XP). However since this chipset shares the same drivers as the SiS 650, there's a good possibility that things still will not work (the driver here is dated March 18, 2003). The only solution (for the SiS 740) is to downsample all of the BMP graphics to a lower resolution (which is why CMBO runs, but CMBB doesn't - the bitmaps are larger in CMBB).

Assuming that you have an AGP slot in your motherboard (you may need to check your motherboard documentation or physically look at the board to make sure) a GeForce 4 Ti 4400/4600/4800 should work. The newest versions of some of these boards support AGP 8X, which means that they need the latest drivers (Detonator 4x.xx series or newer) and hence FSAA doesn't work properly with CM (NVidia may fix this at some point in the future though). You can go to NewEgg for some good pricing and fast service (unless you want to buy from a local retailer). I generally don't recommend the ATI Radeon family since they don't do fog and they currently have the same problems as the NVidias (with the latest drivers).