Kiri
Administrator
SimPixel Administrator
Big Hand in the Sky
Posts: 2,658
|
Post by Kiri on May 22, 2012 3:44:53 GMT
CC,
I'm getting a new PC, and am looking at getting a RADEON 7850. Do you know if it can run the Sims 2 or not?
Kiri
|
|
CharlieChomper
Long Term Member
Totally Technical Helper
Please call me CharlieChomper (or even CC or "the other CC" on this forum). Thanks!
Posts: 1,756
|
Post by CharlieChomper on May 22, 2012 22:51:13 GMT
What I've seen of that series of cards seems to indicate some problems with graphics with Sims2 (in the sense that the game seems to be running at the lowest possible settings and with the options to change them completely greyed out--it may be the age of the game in relation to the hardware and that the game is unable to recognize the card correctly). It's not the only game where I've seen this with in relation to that series, however (most of the titles involved that I've seen complaints about are on the older side--although, some of them (such as WoW) people have reported as working as they should be). I remember seeing a thread about it even last month where someone in the Sims community ran into it with that specific card (I had to do a bit of digging to find it again, but it was on MTS2. However, I don't know if nVidia's last series or its more recent one has fared any better (as while my newest system has a nVidia card in it, I also haven't had time since building that system to either look for all my Sims2 discs nor install it yet to investigate, unfortunately--in the meantime, I had actually been playing Sims2 on my older system). I will try and find my discs to look into it, though, and will let you know the outcome! I can say, though, that even a game as "recent" as Sims Medieval actually had problems recognizing my video card (although, I've never had any problems with Sims3 and my card)--yet that game is actually running everything on the highest settings despite that.
|
|
Kiri
Administrator
SimPixel Administrator
Big Hand in the Sky
Posts: 2,658
|
Post by Kiri on May 23, 2012 6:11:15 GMT
yeah - that was Honeywell, she was the one that originally told me I should do some research. Unfortunately all the research that I did led back to just her question about it. Is there a way of getting the game to recognise the card, or alternatively to force it to higher settings whether it likes it or not? ETA: I just found this reply by J Man to someone with a similiar problem. Do you think it would work? forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=210407
|
|
CharlieChomper
Long Term Member
Totally Technical Helper
Please call me CharlieChomper (or even CC or "the other CC" on this forum). Thanks!
Posts: 1,756
|
Post by CharlieChomper on May 26, 2012 23:10:30 GMT
Sorry for not having gotten back to you earlier, but I didn't expect to have been kept so busy with work. From what it appears, they're running it through virtualization (specifically, Parallels, which is a Windows emulator for Mac OS X that's based upon the open source Wine project), which tends to change the playing field a bit in that emulators tend to react or handle things a bit differently in comparison to running it natively given their resource usage and handling in relation to whatever operating system it's running off of and what operating system it's attempting to mimic the behavior of to get a piece of software running. However, leaving out the Parallels bit and retaining the parenthesis (and, obviously, making a back-up of the Graphic Rules.sgr file before attempting it) may work--however, I admittedly have not attempted to edit that file, personally, so I can't vouch for whether that method will work or not with any certainty or may result in any other issues (such as stability). That said, some video card drivers do provide an option to overwrite settings for given pieces of software/applications or to customize them (by default, they're typically set to "application controlled" (or "default" as AMD sometimes calls it) to let the software (such as a game) decide upon how to configure the settings and how--however, there is sometimes a way of manually deciding this for oneself and changing those settings to overwrite them. The "catch" is that there is a very good reason why most companies recommend sticking with having those settings remain "application" controlled and that's often to do with a concern about stability or wanting to avoid issues--game companies in particular are notoriously fussy about it as are some video card manufacturers). However, AMD drivers do contain this feature (as has been the case with nVidia for years now) and in fact, just made changes to it in December. Typically, these settings are used to "tweak" performances often in games, so it may be possible to try and go that route as well or instead to change the settings to bring them up.
|
|
Kiri
Administrator
SimPixel Administrator
Big Hand in the Sky
Posts: 2,658
|
Post by Kiri on May 27, 2012 9:06:30 GMT
I'll let you'll know how things go. I pick it up on Monday afternoon.
|
|
CharlieChomper
Long Term Member
Totally Technical Helper
Please call me CharlieChomper (or even CC or "the other CC" on this forum). Thanks!
Posts: 1,756
|
Post by CharlieChomper on Jun 14, 2012 20:35:24 GMT
My apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner--I've been very ill until recently.
|
|
Kiri
Administrator
SimPixel Administrator
Big Hand in the Sky
Posts: 2,658
|
Post by Kiri on Jun 15, 2012 6:51:00 GMT
That's quite alright CharlieChomper. I managed to sort it all out myself - and am in the process of writing a tutorial on how to update Sims2 to allow for new Graphics Cards.
It turned out it was just a couple of changes in the videocards.sgr and graphics.sgr in the config folder.
|
|