Video Card

[cookie641]

Hi there, Im a slight computer novice and have just brought a new game "Civilization IV" for my laptop, although it works many of the graphics are missing. On the back of the game it says i need:

 

Minimum: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (NVIDIA GeForce2+ / ATI Radeon 7500+)

 

and at the moment i have:

 

SiS Mirage Graphics (SiS 661)

 

is there something i can download which will make the graphics work or do i need to buy somthing or will it just not work on this computer..............please help!

 

Thanks

[JEBWrench]

The SiS 661 does not support Hardware Transform & Lighting - my best suggestion would be seeing about an NVidia or ATI card that will work with whatever expansion slot(s) you may have.

 

Do you know if you have PCI, AGP, or PCI(e) slots available? If not, we may be able to walk you through finding out.

[cookie641]

No im not sure if i have any of these slots im afraid! Where can i get an ATI/NVidia card from?.... most computer stores?

[JEBWrench]

ATI(Or AMD now, I suppose...) and nVidia are the two largest manufacturers of video cards, most computer stores have a variety of their cards.

 

But before going to buy one, you're going to have to find out what sort of card you can support. I'm not entirely sure how to go about this without opening the machine up, but I'm relatively sure it can be found.

 

The difficulty may lie in finding an affordable card for your system at a computer store. Most tend to offer newer cards which can get excessively expensive. Once you know the options you have, I suggest looking at online computer sales sites and finding a somewhat older card that fits your needs.

 

Unless, of course, you want a smoking fast graphics card, then go spendy. ;)

[hardware_dave]

Its a laptop, no upgrade possible.

 

Dave

[JEBWrench]

Whoops... I should've picked that up before getting their hopes up.

:/