Whats going on with Game Developers ??

Went to buy Splinter Cell Double Agent today only to be shocked at the recommended specs to run the game. My PC is just under a year old and my graphics card a few months old (Geforce 6600GT PCI-Ex), it won't run the game due to the card only able to run Shader 2.
Are Ubisoft right in the head, they say they will not make a shader 2 compatible pc game or release a patch :mad:

Is this the shape of things to come ? people having to update their graphics cards "twice a year !" . Think i'll buy an Xbox 360 instead of getting a new card seeing as Gears of War wont be released on PC either.

tman

http://www.gainward.net/products/product.php?products_id=23
seems to support it according to that...

i got a lend of the game from a mate this evening to see would it work anyway and an error pops up saying Shader 3 not supported, i thought myself the card supported shader 3 , gonna have to find the manual & box for it.

8T8

Your graphics card does support shader model 3.0 it is most likely an outdated driver issue.

Update graphics card driver
Install the 1.01 patch for the game
Install October 2006 Direct-X update

See if it runs after that.

(p.s gears of War isn't that great mostly hype I've already finished it though if you are fed up with maintenance of your PC an Xbox 360 is probably the way to go)

8T8

8T8 wrote:

Your graphics card does support shader model 3.0 it is most likely an outdated driver issue.

Update graphics card driver
Install the 1.01 patch for the game
Install October 2006 Direct-X update

See if it runs after that.

(p.s gears of War isn't that great mostly hype I've already finished it though if you are fed up with maintenance of your PC an Xbox 360 is probably the way to go)

Thanks, tried all of the above and still get the same error , it's got me totally baffled.

(Finished Gears of War already, how long you get out of it ?)

8T8

Hmm that is an unusual error I haven't bought the game so I don't know how well it runs but from the forum posts on the site it appears to be quite buggy, you could try asking in there.

One UBI rep mentions to install the build of Direct-X that comes on the games CD even if you have updated DX recently whether that will fix anything I don't know.

Also make sure you are using the auto launcher and not a shortcut to the game.exe as apparently that too causes problems.

By the way do other SM3.0 games works like Half Life 2, FarCry or F.E.A.R, even 3D Mark 06 ?

As for Gears of war it's not very difficult (in fact dead easy) and is a straight up run & gun affair with a storyline that sort of unravels towards the end (in that you go WTF ??). You should be able to finish it over a weekend on the default difficulty setting.

It does look very nice but I would not recommend it as a OMG must have title. I had more fun playing the demo of Raindow Six Vegas.

TerrorFirmer

Wait, if this game actually 'requires' shader 3.0 does that mean older ati X300/550/600/800 etc series cards dont work at all, or is it not actually a requirement just a recommendation

8T8

UBI Soft did that with the last Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory when the game shipped there was only a DX9 SM3.0 path no SM2.0 path but after a few weeks UBI released a patch which enabled a SM2.0 path.

I believe the situation is similar with with Spinter Cell: Double Agent (but no SM2.0 path is present) judging from some of the posts on the forums but I'm not 100% certain on that.

UBI also did it with King Kong the HD graphics were only available to those with SM3.0 cards you can in part blame the Xbox 360 & PS3 as these are both powered by SM3.0 class GPU's as such developers can be lazy in not supporting "older" hardware as SM2.0 can only be found on the PC.

Original Xbox & PS2 can be roughly classed as SM1.1 devices.

8T8

8T8 wrote:

One UBI rep mentions to install the build of Direct-X that comes on the games CD even if you have updated DX recently whether that will fix anything I don't know.

Tried that and past versions of DX9c, no luck.

8T8 wrote:

By the way do other SM3.0 games works like Half Life 2, FarCry or F.E.A.R, even 3D Mark 06 ?

Half Life 2, FarCry & F.E.A.R work fine, 3D Mark 06 will not run, it just shuts down my PC when i go to run it. I've also restored my PC & have done fresh installs of XP but 3D Mark still won't work nor will Splinter Cell DA

8T8

Something doesn't sound right then if running 3D Mark causes the PC to shut down or crash it may be a hardware problem.

The first place to check is the system RAM download and run Memtest+ and leave it go for a 1-3 hours to see if it finds anything if it does then one of your RAM modules is faulty.

Thanks 8T8, i'll give that a go.

Kintarō Hattori

Sniff 8T8 - Your the man!!!

DublinEvents

The 6600GT is definitely a shader model 3 card. Something’s wrong with that stupid game I bet. They will probably release a patch for it. Seems like they didn’t do enough in-house testing or maybe they just developed the game on the latest geforce 7000 series and the radeon 1900 series.

Problem is with the game, just have to see if another patch comes out to solve all bug issues left with it.

RopeDrink

RopeDrink wrote:

On a different note, the problem you seem to have may not actually stem from the game itself and would do well to follow 8t8's good advice. On top of that be sure to keep your eyes peeled for patches and / or updates for your hardware as well as the game itself. Certainly not an all too common issue, hope you get it sorted.

Followed 8t8's advice (thanks 8t8), test came back fine, all other games work like NFS Carbon, F.E.A.R, The Mark etc.... 3D Mark 06 still crashes just one of those things i guess.

8T8

So the RAM got the all clear but some games work and some don't hmm, 3D Mark is usually reliable there may be something lurking in the system that is causing it to crash but pinning that down is the hard part.

Futuremark have a FAQ with one entry that may be worth trying to see if 3D mark loads after this.

Also in the control panel/administrative tools/event viewer check the logs to see if the crash by 3D Mark is logged and if anything it says may give us a clue as to the cause.

As for Splinter Cell: DA the more I have read on this title the more I have seen it is riddled with bugs & a lot of people are having problems. I would suggest if you really want to play it hold out for the next patch & hope that it fixes whatever problem is at hand.

Oh yeah NVIDIA have released new 93.81 drivers as well doesn't hurt to give them a whirl.

8T8

8T8 wrote:

Futuremark have a FAQ with one entry that may be worth trying to see if 3D mark loads after this.

Thanks 8T8, that's done the trick

8T8

Splinter Cell Double Agent 1.02 patch is out I'm curious to know if the game runs now.

I've been holding off buying it till they work out most of the kinks.

TerrorFirmer

HavoK wrote:

Wait, if this game actually 'requires' shader 3.0 does that mean older ati X300/550/600/800 etc series cards dont work at all, or is it not actually a requirement just a recommendation

currently still no older X series cards support Double Agent at all. So you could still be using something like an X850, be running other games at high-ish settings, and are unable to get DA to even start. Extremely annoying for many people. I wonder if they will release a patch to address this....

8T8

8T8 wrote:

Splinter Cell Double Agent 1.02 patch is out I'm curious to know if the game runs now.

I've been holding off buying it till they work out most of the kinks.

Game runs fine apart from the odd crash, very short game though, finished it yesterday.