Steve_R Posted November 20, 2004 Share Posted November 20, 2004 Page 28 of the "Quick Reference Guide" notes this problem. According to the reference guide it is a "flaw" in the on-board SIS 650 chip set. 1. Have you had this problem and were you able to get around it? 2. Would it work to buy a new video card and disable the onboard video? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 If your VAIO is a laptop you'll be unable to change it out for a different video chip. If this is a desktop VAIO, then another videocard should work fine (an nVidia-based one should display all of the visual effects of CM). Depending on your VAIO it may or may not have an AGP slot, which would be the best slot to use. Otherwise you'll need a PCI version of any videocard you intend to purchase. The SiS 650 will work with the CM series to my knowledge. However the latest drivers on the SiS website seemed to have screwed things up again (whereas a previous version of the driver did work). The latest driver from the Windows Update website (the one where you get all of the updates from Microsoft for Windows) seems to work fine also. Which particular version of Windows are you running ? The above comments concerned Windows XP and may not be completely true for Win9x/ME. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted November 23, 2004 Author Share Posted November 23, 2004 1. The Sony Vaio is a Desktop RX-860. 2. I am using Windows XP. 3. The drivers from the SIS website FAILED. 4. I did a cursory attempt to find the drivers on the Windows Driver download page, but all it seemed to show were drivers reltated to microsoft products, so I think I am in the wrong place. 5. Since the Sony Vaio has on-board video, I am wondering how to turn it off after installing a video card. 6. Thanks for responding. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 3: what does FAILED mean, exactly? 5: typically, onboard video chips are automatically disabled when you insert an AGP card. You have to check whether you have an AGP slot. If so, you should be fine by just plugging a card in. If not, describe what you have. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 The Sony VAIO PCV-RX860 has the SiS651 integrated graphics. The latest drivers from SiS do not work as you've found out. Earlier versions however do work. I'm not sure if the UniVGA v. 2.22 driver listed here works or not. If not, then I may have to email a driver to you (if you have an account that can take a multi-megabyte attachment). The Windows Update (this is a generic pointer) website will usually detect your video driver and offer anything it has that may (or may not) be newer - sometimes even if the driver isn't installed, but the hardware is present. You may want to uninstall your driver and see what Windows installs by default. I've been able to play with an SiS 740 (the AMD equivalent of the 650) with the drivers offered by default from Windows XP SP1. The Windows Update site (in the 'Drivers' section) offered updates to that driver that still worked with the CM series. As Redwolf pointed out, typically all you have to do is put in an AGP card and the built-in video will disable (since it is an 'AGP' device itself). I'm not aware of any particular compatibility issues regarding videocards with this Sony model, but that may be something that you have to look out for. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted November 23, 2004 Author Share Posted November 23, 2004 Thanks very much. I will have to wait till after Thanksgiving to pursue resolving this issue as we will be out of town. Redwolf - Failed simply meant, did not work as expected. Actually the game is working, the problem is a black screen; the ultimate fog of war!!!! I suppose a braille version of the game could be developed!?!? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 If the FX 5200 is "underpowered", what about the FX 5500? It is priced at $80. The FX 5200 is priced at $50. http://www.pcclub.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A9602746 I am the one with the Vaio which has the on-board video, which does not work. So I am looking to see what type of card I can put in the AGP slot. The Viao has a 2.2 Ghz CPU. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 The FX 5500 should be fine for CM. It's a bit faster than the FX 5200 (and sufficiently so), but slower than the FX 5700 series, though the 5700LE is possibly the equivalent of the 5500 series. Moving up to the 5700 series may put the videocard into the $120 price range. Keeping under $200 you can go up to the FX 5900XT which is a step above all the other cards here. The PC Club pricing online looks pretty good, but I don't know what their shipping prices are and the liklihood of paying sales tax (if they have a store in your state). They don't have a great selection, though they are offering good prices on good cards. Newegg is one online dealer I can recommend. They've got great service, good pricing (most of the time) and a good selection. They offer some more videocards than PC Club does online. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 "NEIL" Has reported the same problem that I am having. -------------------------------------------------- "I recently bought the CDV anthology...CMBO ran fine and I am really happy with it. However, CMBB and CBAK didn't. It all works until it says 'loading 3d graphics' then that box stays on the screen with the .... flickering; black screen in background but can see labels of places. Am running XP and I deleted the Hotfix mentioned in the suggestions. Also I only have service pack 1 - PLEASE HELP ME SOMEONE!!!! I dont have a graphics card as apperently, its incorporated in the processor - Its a celron 2ghz? I think - Not very technically minded. Any help would be great - Neil" -------------------------------------------------- So far the news is not good. I went to the SIS webpage http://www.sis.com/support/index.htm and downloaded their drivers, the video would not display. I tried the Windows update webpage, (after deinstalling the drivers) and windows did not detect the missing driver. So that approach failed. I will see what else I can find, but the solution may be to buy a video card for the AGP slot. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 10, 2004 Author Share Posted December 10, 2004 In early December I found out that CMAK would not work on a Sony Viao computer as it uses the SIS chipset. Since that time, I have been reading of others on the forum, that they too are experiencing the very same problem. I have ordered a video card eVGA GeForce FX5500, 256-A8-N313-AX since I can not get a SIS driver that will work. The card has not yet arrived so I don't know if my problem will be solved. The number of comments raises a couple of suggestions. 1. Can Battlefront post drivers known to work on the support page? 2. Will Battlefront contact SIS to get the problem corrected. Alternatively, can the program be patched to work with the SIS chipset. 3. Going to the Windows update page did not work for me. So far none of the other people who have left messages on this forum has reported sucess in this regard. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 Let me try and answer your three questions above. #1 If I can aquire a copy of the drivers that do work, I will of course post them and link to them in the troubleshooting guide (which I obviously need to update once more). 2. We have, multiple times, but SiS dont really pay much attention to software developers and there is nothing on our end that we can change to fix the problem. 3. This is apparently related to issue #1. Apparently, SiS released a new set of drivers back in August that DID work, which MS then offered on their download page. Sometime later, SIS released a newer set of drivers which once more did not work, it is those drivers that are now on SIS's and the Windows Download page. As soon as I can aquire a set of the older drivers that work, I will make them available for download. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 11, 2004 Share Posted December 11, 2004 The following is a repeat of a posting in another thread. I have sent Madmatt some of the drivers that I have downloaded from the Windows Update website that have worked with an SiS 740 chipset, Windows XP SP2 and CMAK 1.03. The driver is version 6.14.10.3640. It is NEWER than what is posted at SiS's website. While my testing was with a SiS 740 chipset, I believe that the results should be the same for people running SiS 650 series chips. The video cores for the chipsets are the same and they're supported by the same driver (with some minor file differences). If you have the time you can also try a larger download of the drivers from this website: http://download.it168.com/pages/driver59366.shtml (click on the link next to the icon of a floppy disk and red arrow) These are the 3.64 drivers (SiS is only offering the 3.63a drivers right now). I have not tried these drivers personally. However a file comparison showed that they were the same core drivers as the ones I downloaded from Microsoft. So my assumption is that they should still work. I would recommend setting your video memory allocation in your CMOS/BIOS setup to the maximum (either 64Mb or 32Mb) your motherboard supports; and hopefully you have more than 128Mb of system memory. If you have the money, purchasing a dedicated videocard should give you better performance than almost any built-in/integrated video solution that utilizes "shared memory". If you can't afford it (or you have a laptop), then the SiS integrated video should still work fine with these drivers. The texture quality may not be top-notch, but it should do well in supporting the visual effects of the current CM series. Regarding CMx2... you will probably want to upgrade at that point. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 11, 2004 Author Share Posted December 11, 2004 Duplicate Reply Post for those following the SIS chipset saga. Bad news for me and my Sony Viao. The SIS video drivers (version 6.14.10.3640) did not work. That does not mean that they may not work with other SIS chipsets. I hope the others are more successful. In the meantime, I await the arrival of the new video card. Many thanks Schrullenhaft. You have provided excellent support eventhough a compatible driver could not be found. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted December 13, 2004 Share Posted December 13, 2004 I just now uploaded a set of drivers to our website that should work for your SiS video card. Here is a link to the file: http://www.battlefront.com/misc/sis650_740.zip It is a 1 meg zip file, just unzip it to a temp folder on your computer and read the included "Install.txt" file to see how to install them for your system. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted December 13, 2004 Share Posted December 13, 2004 Just got an update from Schrullenhaft that these new drivers still may not work with some of the older SiS chipsets and GPU's based on the 650 series (SiS 650, M650, 650GX, 650GL and 651/652). These drivers should work with the following chipsetsthough: SiS661FX (P4), SiSM661MX (P4-M), SiS760 (AMD64), SiS760GX (AMD64), SiSM760 (AMD64), SiSM741 (AMD), SiS741 (AMD), SiS741GX (AMD), SiS740 (AMD), SiS730 (AMD), SiS630/S/E/ET (P3/P2). Madmatt [ December 13, 2004, 12:26 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted December 13, 2004 Share Posted December 13, 2004 I am still trying to locate an old copy of the 3.61a drivers which came out in August which I had heard from several customers DID actually work with the older 650 series of SiS chipsets. If I can locate a copy, and confirm that it works, I will post it as well. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 14, 2004 Author Share Posted December 14, 2004 Thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 14, 2004 Share Posted December 14, 2004 Bumping this thread along with the other SiS650 related thread... Please try out the SiS650 drivers hosted on this site. You can download them from this link: http://www.battlefront.com/misc/sis650_740.zip They have worked for one laptop user with a SiSM650 chipset. Although this won't be a long term solution for some users it can possibly get them running right now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve_R Posted December 18, 2004 Author Share Posted December 18, 2004 GOOD NEWS the 3D graphics loaded on the Sony Viao. Since today is Saturday, I had time to go over this issue. I believe the problem was solved, in short, by reloading DIRECTX 9c. The current SIS driver version that I have is 6.14.10.3640. I tried to install the zipped version "sis650_740.zip" but ran into a series of roadblocks. The major one being that the uninstall program would hang. Windows also would not let me overwrite the existing driver. Anyway, as I read the forum messages, one message mentioned DIRECTX. Since nothing else appeared to work, I reloaded DIRECTX 9c off the Microsoft webpage, and CMAK loaded!!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
86smopuim Posted December 19, 2004 Share Posted December 19, 2004 possible 3.61a drivers http://drivers.acasa.ro/download_driver_4856.html http://drivers.softpedia.com/progDownload/Sis--a-WHQL-Download-6648.html 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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