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Rave
November 29th, 2007, 22:55
Hi, I've got a 16MB S3 SuperSavage in my old laptop that I'm having to use, and I'm pretty sure this is what's causing FGII to crash when it tries to start up. Does anyone know of any work-arounds that will allow me to assign more memory to my graphics card from my main RAM? Has anyone worked around a problem like this before or am I just totally screwed until I get a new laptop?

Thanks

Mellock
November 29th, 2007, 23:28
Heya Rave,

When you share RAM with your video card, you can usually assign it in the BIOS. When you boot your computer, there is usually a key like ESC, or F10 you hold to get into that. (You probably know this, I'm just mentioning it to be sure.)

There is a menu in your BIOS called "advanced". You can usually find a setting there called "shared memory size". Most of the time you can allocate it there in chunks of 16, 32 or 64 megabytes. It may be slightly different on yours.

I would also like to point you to this post I found on the web:
https://www.driverforum.com/graphics5/12265.html Which indicates there may be... ah... "lacking" directx support. (I haven't looked up anything else on the chipset yet... )

- What model laptop do you have?
- There's a tool called dxdiag you can use to get some more info about your directx capabilities. You can run it by doing start->run->dxdiag
- What is the error code you get?

And finally: your BIOS contains some pretty important settings. While you can usually do little harm when applying common sense, I'm not one to take much responsibility if it *does* backfire. :p

Rave
November 29th, 2007, 23:43
Thanks for the quick reply Mellock,

The machine's an old Toshiba Tecra T9100. I already used dxdiag and it runs all the dx9 tests fine, and I've been into the bios but there are no graphics options. That's the first place I thought to look, but it's pretty spartan and the driver that comes with the card doesn't show any options for adjusting any memory. I took a look at that site and I already have the stuff from there.

Do you know any other ways to give a video card access to more memory?

Mellock
November 30th, 2007, 00:32
Graphics/Video
• 14.1” TFT active-matrix LCD; internal display supports up to 16M
colors at 1024 x 768 (XGA) or 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+)
• S3 Super Savage /IXC-166 graphics controller; 16MB internal
video memory
• 3D Graphics Accelerator, 4x AGP bus support; 2D Graphics
Accelerator, BitBLT hardware
• External Color Support:
1024 x 768, 800 x 600; 60/75/85Hz Non-Interlaced @ 16M
1280 x 1024; 60/75/85Hz Non-Interlaced @ 64K
1400 x 1050; 60Hz Non-Interlaced @ 64 K
1600 x 1200; 60/75Hz Non-Interlaced @ 64K
1600 x 1200, 1400 x 1050, 1280 x 1024, 1024 x 768, 800 x 600:
16M color support

----------------

Eh... could you do me a favour and tell me what the amount of ram is you're supposed to have? If you see the full amount on bootup (like 128 instead of 112) I'd be pretty sure that that memory isn't actually *shared*, but *integrated*.

Oh, and the error code you get when starting FG...

Rave
November 30th, 2007, 02:40
The card's got 16 MB integrated memory, but I know some cards use a combination of integrated and shared. I was wondering if I could hook something like that up with mine or whether it's completely tied to hardware...

Here are screenshots of the error messages I get:

https://img150.imageshack.us/img150/240/errorjf3.jpg

Then when I click on the 'click here' I get:

https://img407.imageshack.us/img407/8089/firstwindowoi0.jpg

And the 'technical information' (I didn't include all of it, tell me if you want it):

https://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3417/errordetailssz2.jpg

Mellock
November 30th, 2007, 16:09
0xc0000005 is an access violation related to memory... It may be your RAM, but it's commonly caused by video cards as well.

One alternative way of getting more memory to a videocard is by turbo memory. Basically a 1 gigabyte ram chip that is used solely for the videocard. Unfortunately, I *doubt* that option is supported by your motherboard.

If you really want to be sure, you can run a program called memtest86 to see how your RAM is doing, but you're probably right about the video memory. I'm afraid I can't offer any more in-depth assistance with that. Or a definitive answer. You may ask someone more knowledgable then me, or perhaps contact Toshiba support?

Rave
November 30th, 2007, 17:40
Yeah, I think I'm just buggered here. Thanks for all the information and help Mellock. I was thinking about getting a new laptop anyway, so I guess I'll have to do that.