Sony Vaio laptop with a 64mb ATI Radeon IGP 345M graphics card

lehlp

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 1, 2005
Messages
5
I get the black terrain/chesire cat graphics bug. Is this (or will it possibly be) patchable or should I just take the game back because my laptop will never be able to play it?

Any help would be very appreciated.

Thank you.
 
I'm in the same boat.
I've read that Firaxis customer support essentially has told us to go pack sand, because our chip is illegit and no patch is on the way.:suicide:
In light of the seemingly widespread discontent on this forum, is a patch really that unlikely?
Then again, they could be sand-bagging us until they get their junk in gear.
Note: Discontent seems widespread because I haven't clicked beyond the Tech support forum since Saturday. Perchance, once I get my junk squared away, I hope to be in a better place.
:ninja:

Action Item:
I am waiting for a categorical "negative" from an authoritative source on whether or not my rig can rock this puppy.
If I get that "negative", I want a categorical "affirmative" from an authoritative source that a patch is en route.
I will repeat this process until I am satisfied with the feedback.

Here's my stats:
I am running Civ IV with

System:
Sony PCG-FRV37 Laptop
Pent 4 (Rel 6.0)
446 RAM
DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

OS:
Windows XP Home (5.1)

Vid Chip:
ATI Radeon IGP 345M
RS200M AGP (0x4337)
64 MB
TnL support included

Driver:
ati2dvag.dll
6.14.0010.6392
 
Firstly I am impressed that I'm not the only one with the IGP 345M. However after reading what Willem said, I'm pretty miffed about not being able to play this game regardless of a patch.
Agreed Meat Wag, that we will wait for the affirmatives form the authoritive sources.
PS Some useless info...you can increase the memory allocation on your graphics card natrually at the expense of your RAM. But thought it cool should you want to say you have a 128mb card :crazyeye:
 
Willem said:
It doesn't look like it. I've read other people haven't gotten it to work properly and there's no work around possible like there is with the Radeon 7500. I'd say you're out of luck.

PS: No it won't work. For one thing there's only support for Direct X 6 with those cards. Check out this web site:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=98&var2=0

Pardon my possible ignorance, but how does that jive with the fact that my dxdiag tells me that I'm rolling with DirectX 9.0c?
 
Just because you have Dx 9 installed on your system doesn't mean that your card can do everything that it's capable of. It will execute everything up to 6 then nothing will happen after that. And Civ requires that you are able to run all functions of Dx 9. In fact, it's added a couple of routines that Microsoft hasn't even released to the general public yet.
 
I think the problem with this chip is that although ATI created a fairly modern chip for laptops, (just like Intel did, the cards are not bad or anything) they did not incorporate certain functions required for modern 3D games. This may have something to do with battery consumption, or maybe with the amount of heat such hardware features would generate.

Bottomline is really that laptops aren't being produced for gaming. Although a good many games will run on laptops, the heat that graphics cards produce from their GPU when calculating heavy 3D graphics is something they need to be aware of when building a laptop. There is a reason why most modern graphics cards have their own powered cooler on their GPU.

I do not know IF this is the reason, but I can see it being the reason why mobile chips lack the support for certain hardware functionality.

Also, even though you run DirectX 9.0c, it does not mean that the hardware understands all DirectX 9.0c functionality. In general, hardware manufacturors start to support new DirectX functions a few months before a new DirectX is released, and in many cases older cards already support all the new functions. But with mobile chips, some manufacturors may have decided to not add certain functionality to mobile chips because of power consumption, heat generation, space, or whatever reason.

The bottomline is that a laptop's graphics capabilities will become obsolete within a year after purchase. Laptops generally don't come with the newest graphic functionality until a year or 2 years after that functionality arrives on a desktop computer, and by the time you buy your laptop the graphics side of it is practically already obsolete for the games that are due to come out next year.

And there you are with a laptop bought in 2003 that is still good for 2 more years and it doesn't run your game. The fact is that the technology in that 2003 laptop was probably designed in 2000,2001.

When purchasing a laptop, you have to be VERY careful. If you want it to be a gaming machine, you are better off to save up the extra $1,000 needed for an AWESOME laptop instead of just a GOOD one. Laptops are expensive enough as they are now, but gaming makes buying them a whole different issue.

Personally, I would rather buy a GOOD desktop system for an affordable price, and then buy a CHEAP laptop to do your work on the road.

Hey, at least most laptops run Civ 3 :)
 
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