No enough video memory

It's the first time I come up with this error. My neighboor lent my Paradox game Diplomacy. I installed it, applied the latest patch and the game refuses to run. It says I need 32Mb of video memory.

DxDiag says I have 16 Mb of video memory. However, many other more modern games are ran on my machine and it never stopped them, although it slowed them :)

Is this just the way it is, or is there something else that can be done? I have my graphics card latest drivers (it's a Trident CyberBlade XP Ai1) and DirectX 9.0c. I just a tad bit confused. never seen this error before.

T'is weird if you managed to get more modern games running. Maybe they swapped texture data in and out like buggery, hence the slow-down. Something along those lines I'd think.

If you play games quite a lot, a new graphics card is a good investment if it doesn't involve getting a new motherboard too (E.G. for me to upgrade I'd need a new motherboard since I've got AGP not PCI-E. I may as well get a new bloody processor too). The cost / play thing worked out quite well for me: I spent £99 on a PNY nVidia 6600GT 128MB and have been able to play every game I've wanted too since. Well except Oblivion, but then again a crippled My Little Pony doll could write a better renderer than Bethesda.

It's not even overclocked. Well unless setting the AGP aperture to 256MB counts as overclocking.

Just out of interest, what are the specs of your machine?

It's a laptop so I guess I can't do much about it. A Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000. I did increase it's memory a couple of years ago to 1GB and it's hard-drive to 40Gb. But I don't think I can change the video card.

Oh, darn. I'm not sure if laptop's even have "cards" do they? Aren't they mostly part of the motherboard?

>> Aren't they mostly part of the motherboard?

Maybe they are. I don't know, I've not had the heart to take my lappy apart yet!!
I've a 128 MB graphics card on my laptop if you want it, Mario :p. I never use it. I hope Fallout II will run on it ... I'm gettin' it soon :D Haven't had a chance to look for it in ages.

> I hope Fallout II will run on it

See.. that's what I mean. Fallout II runs on my machine. Slow at times... but it does.

> I've a 128 MB graphics card on my laptop if you want it, Mario . I never use it

Deal! :D

Heh, I've been talking about gettin Fallout II again for ... well ... ages. I mean AGES. I remember playing it on my old 400 MHz (I think it was lower than that though. 200 at best) Compaq or something, and it took AGES to save/load, and because of that, one risks dying instead of waisting time saving. Then they save when the situation is grave, only to realize it's too late. Sigh. Soon, with time I'll get over it. Haha. Hey, when a friend of mine finished it, he went and talked to some old guy, and got a book from him, and every time he read the book he got a ton of experience. I mean with every few reads he went up a level. You ever get that?

Don't you share video memory at all?

> Don't you share video memory at all?

I have no idea :)
If there is something I know nothing about is video cards and all the leet talk around them

Well, when I was researching buying a Lap Top, some friends of mine were talking about graphics cards and whatnot, and someone mentioned something about video cards and sharing memory. Something like a 256 MB graphics card, 128 shared, which means that 128 MB of the computer's precious RAM was used by the graphics card. Just a way of getting a better graphics card I guess, without buying a 256. I don't know whether or not it's an option or whether only cards built to accommodate such a partition are the only ones who can. If you have enough RAM, it shouldn't make a difference though.

Did some skimming about it. Seems to be by design. No magic software to enable it or anything.

Bummer!

I have a 256MB card. 16MB is way too low to even think about playing games. They are slow because the card is taking the bus to use system RAM as video RAM.

If you can even call it a card. Chances are its just a little chip on the main board hooked directly to the PCI bus. :p

For any modern game I recommend at least 1GB to 2GB system RAM if not more and a video card with at least 128MB to 256MB, preferably 512MB. I also recommend it supports shader model 3.0.

While you're listing those recommendations, why not add that the video card should preferably have a 256-bit bus and use GDDR3. :p