Outaded vid card for

[Yuna_Firerose]

I recently acquired 'Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines' for Xmas and finished installing it last night. After creating my character and loading up the intro, the video and audio *really* lagged to the extent that the audio would skip like a badly scratched up cd. Once it skipped for a full minute and on the same damn syllable.

 

Eventually, I turned everything - gamma, particles, etc - to the bare minimum as well as unchecking bump mapping, high quality audio, and environmental effects audio. The vid now runs better, but when it gets to the Prince's speech, its the same problem: skipping and lagging. I have not yet heard one coherent word from the Prince....its that bad.

 

After posting this on another forum, I was informed it was my video card:

 

 

and that my 'video card is a TNT64 which wont be able to cope with Bloodlines high requirements.'

 

So my question to anyone willing to help is this: How would I upgrade it? I see from the Nvidia Drivers page that you can download software for the card. Is that the same as upgrading it? This is not my computer to modify at will and I would appreciate any additional information before I click that 'Go/Download' button.

[GreatWhiteNope]

Upgrading your video card's driver allows it to work better with Windows.

 

Make sure you download and install both the latest video card driver, and also the latest version of DirectX if you don't already have it.

[Yuna_Firerose]

Direct X 9.0? Yeah... I installed it. It came with the game.

 

Okay, now I know what upgrading does but my main question is... how do I upgrade?

[GreatWhiteNope]

The latest version of DirectX is actually 9.0c.

 

Get it here:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

 

Your graphics card driver can be upgraded by going to the following location and clicking "Graphics Driver - Geforce and TNT2 - Windows XP / 2000".

 

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

 

That will take you to the download page. Run that file and it'll update your driver.

[Yuna_Firerose]

Thanks for all your help ^-^

 

It updated it and improved the performance of the intro...but only somewhat. It still lags quite a bit. Perhaps I need to update my audio card? ...heh, if that is even possible, that is.

[Jobber of the Week]

You need to buy a whole new video card. No matter how updated the drivers are, the TNT2 is a card from around 1997/98, and Bloodlines is a recent game that runs on the same powerful engine as the current shooter hit Half-Life 2.

 

You're going to need to spend money on a new video card, open up your computer, take out the TNT2, and replace it with a new one. Even then, if the rest of your computer is as old as that card, you're going to have problems.

 

Basically, it's time to spend money on a new computer again if you want to be a gamer.

[Yuna_Firerose]

*sigh* I was afraid of that. how expensive are they?

[Jobber of the Week]

System requiretments, according to GameSpot:

 

* System: 1.2 GHz Athlon or 1.2 GHz Pentium® III processor or higher or equivalent

* CD-ROM: 4X CD-ROM

* Video Memory: 64 MB VRAM

* Hard Drive Space: 3300 MB

* Other: 384MB of RAM (512 reccomended); 3D hardware accelerator card required;

 

 

This game is based on the Source engine, and ATI Radeon cards tend to work a little better for it than NVidia cards do. Since you probably don't want to spend the outrageous fortune for a high-end card, that minor boost might be kind of important. Radeons come in a variety of model numbers, and any current model will be able to play what that game demands at decent image quality settings.

 

On the other hand, you already have NVidia drivers and stuff installed for your TNT2, so moving to another NVidia card would be less of a computer hassle (I had to wipe and start over when changing brands on my computer, which is a pain in the rear.) If you choose to go for the Nvidia route, look up the GeForce6600 line. If that costs too much, go down to the 5xxx series, but the 6600 is a great deal for the money and will last you quite a while.

[MrRant]

GeForce MX4000 - http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-130-186&depa=1 $53.50 + 1.99 shipping.

 

Good enough for what you want (plus its 128MB RAM so it should give you a little wiggle room for the future) and it's PCI which I'm assuming that TNT is. Decent price as well. If you have AGP then you can find some about ~$5-10 cheaper but it would be hard to tell without you posting a screen shot of the General Tab.

[Yuna_Firerose]

For what its worth, there be the General tab...

 

I know I had plenty of space, as everything installed with no problems. It ran wonderfully [up to the intro, that is]. The character creation went together without a problem.. a bit of audio skipping when I'd switch from male to female for the clans, but I was willing to forget it. The intro, however, was not so easy to ignore...

 

I do thank you both for the detailed and plain-english help you've supplied. ^^;

[MrRant]

Wrong General Tab. You want the one on the same screenshot you posted the first place.

 

Go to the Device Manager and then under Display Adapters, right click on the TNT and click Properties.

[Yuna_Firerose]

 

That one?

[MrRant]

Yeah.. so you have a PCI card. If you pick up like the one that I mentioned you pretty much will just need to pull the old one out and plug the new one into the same slot and turn the computer on and just follow the instructions on the screen.

 

Fairly simple really.

[Jobber of the Week]

Rant's actually got a pretty good idea there, actually. That card won't be current for as long as the ones I suggested, but if the rest of your computer is up to snuff that should give you what you need to play.

 

And then whenever you find yourself behind again, you can just go ahead and replace the whole computer if you want to, which is a lot easier than upgrading everything or putting parts from an old computer into a new one.