Fat Dave Posted December 7, 2001 Share Posted December 7, 2001 Hi guys, I've recently acquired a Compaq Armada laptop with the following specs: Pentium II 266MHz processor, 97 MB RAM...and here's the crunch...a S3 ViRGE/MX Video card with only 4MB. Before I go through the 'trouble' and expense of installing Windows 98 over the top of the Windows NT 4.0 OS it has currently, I would like to know from someone who knows what CMBO would 'look' and play like with such a minimum video card. Regards, David 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted December 7, 2001 Share Posted December 7, 2001 It ain't gonna be too pretty, but it will run. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 7, 2001 Share Posted December 7, 2001 wwb_99 is correct, it should run on your system, but it may not look as nice as some of the screen shots you've seen. The Virge DX/VX/MX chipsets were fairly rudimentary 3D accelerators, so you won't get too much performance out of them and the 4Mb of VRAM may force CM use the lower resolution version of the bitmaps, so things may look a bit blurry when you're at Level 1 viewing the battlefield. For CMBB, your video card won't be sufficient since the spec is 8Mb of VRAM. This will be a bit of a problem for laptop users since they're stuck with what the vendor put in and very rarely have the opportunity to upgrade the VRAM. [ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellros Posted December 8, 2001 Share Posted December 8, 2001 I used to use that very S3 card when CMBO first came out. I had no fog effect, and when viewing vehicles/troops/terrain up close all the detail was blurry (thus inhibiting thebeauty of any mods I downloaded. But the game was playabable. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Manuel Posted December 10, 2001 Share Posted December 10, 2001 My H.P. 6645C comes with a default 2 MB vidcard. Honestly, I wouldn't know if the images WERE blurry- nothing to compare to. I only have problems with someone's buildings...Panzertruppen? Tanks-a-lot? Those are too hi-res. Just about every other high-res mod works OK, though. However, I use hi-res smoke, and if there are too many plumes of it they all cut out. Also, I've never seen Fog, ever. The H.P. website seemed to show that I couldn't even upgrade this 'board from 2MB VRAM. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 10, 2001 Share Posted December 10, 2001 Silvio Manuel - your HP Pavilion is based on the Intel 810, which uses shared memory. I don't know if the setting in the CMOS/BIOS setup allows you to set the amount of RAM that the i810 will use for video or not. If it does, then it may be possible to increase the amount of memory for the video up to 8Mb. How much of a difference this may make for you is unknown. It could affect very little, but it might help with the high-res buildings. The i810 doesn't seem to support fog-tables as far as I'm aware. Looking through the Intel PDF on the latest driver there is a mention of "emulated pixel fog" since v. 6.4 to allow for correct display of fog effects for games that require fog-tables (I don't know if this would work with CM however). You can get the latest drivers (6.5.2) from Intel (select your OS and go from there - this driver is newer than the one posted on HP's site for this Pavilion). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Manuel Posted December 11, 2001 Share Posted December 11, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft: Silvio Manuel - your HP Pavilion is based on the Intel 810, which uses shared memory. I don't know if the setting in the CMOS/BIOS setup allows you to set the amount of RAM that the i810 will use for video or not. If it does, then it may be possible to increase the amount of memory for the video up to 8Mb. How much of a difference this may make for you is unknown. It could affect very little, but it might help with the high-res buildings. The i810 doesn't seem to support fog-tables as far as I'm aware. Looking through the Intel PDF on the latest driver there is a mention of "emulated pixel fog" since v. 6.4 to allow for correct display of fog effects for games that require fog-tables (I don't know if this would work with CM however). You can get the latest drivers (6.5.2) from Intel (select your OS and go from there - this driver is newer than the one posted on HP's site for this Pavilion).<hr></blockquote> Thank you for the quick and helpful reply. I DL'd 6.5.2, but still no fog or notable increase in graphic quality. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Dave Posted December 11, 2001 Author Share Posted December 11, 2001 Thanks for the imput guys, appreciate it. David 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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