How do I know what kinda graphics card my PC has?

Richter915 · 17-Jun-2005, 11:57 PM #1

I wanna get the game Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II but I dunno if my PC fits the min. requirements in regards to the graphics card. The website ( http://support.lucasarts.com/tsg/SWK...SystemReqs.htm ) says:

32 MB OpenGL 1.4 compatible AGP or PCX 3D Graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L) Capability required

that that is the minimum. How do I check for that? How do I check for the kinda hardware my PC has in general? Thanks. I'm running a windows XP 2nd edition if that helps.

Scorpion · 12:12 AM

Click Start> type in the box 'dxdiag' (without quotes) and hit enter. This will open the directX diagnostic, and will give you all the graphical/audio info you need.

For general Hardware, use the device manager. Right click on My computer, click properties, then click the hardware tab, then the Device manager button. In there it tell you lots of hardware names etc.
Or, you could use something like EVEREST which is a free app. Another one called Belarc Advisor is also handy and free.

Scorp.

Richter915 · 18-Jun-2005, 12:20 AM #3

ok I did that and I went over to the display tab and I got stuff saying "VIA/S3G Unichrome IGP" and all but the requirements say "32 MB OpenGL 1.4 compatible AGP or PCX 3D Graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L) Capability required"...how do I know if I have those requirements met specifically? Thanks.

Scorpion · 18-Jun-2005, 11:25 AM #4

That video 'card' is an onboard one, i.e, built into the motherboard.If you go into bios, you can probably increase the amount of shared ram that the video uses to work (it shares some of the sustem ram to process graphics), although it is probably set at 32mb already, but check. Depending on how much system ram you have, you can set it higher, like 64mb, to give better vid performance.

However.....it does NOT support T&L, so you cannot play that game on it, unless THIS program works. It will 'fake' the T&L on your system, and works with quite a few games. If I were you, I'd try it, and see if you can download a demo of that Star Wars game to try first, before buying it.

Other than that, you might want to consider getting a video card for your system.

Scorp.