The Great Bargain Deals Discussion thread.

gunsmoke on 17/11/2009 at 16:22

Quote Posted by doctorfrog

Looking at the post for the Best Buy Black Friday sale, I raised my eyebrows until I had a mental picture of my local store on a previous Black Friday.

Goddamn, nigga, me's buyin' some shit the day after Turkey.

EvaUnit02 on 17/11/2009 at 18:02

Quote Posted by Enchantermon

Sooooo...can't get the demo to work. It runs, but all that happens is that I sit at the desktop for 10 seconds or so, then it shows me the framerate results. Probably a Windows 7 compatibility error, though comp. modes don't help. Ah well. I think I might buy it anyway; it seems fun enough.

Install the (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04ac064b-00d1-474e-b7b1-442d8712d553) latest DirectX, your newest GPU driver and Nvidia PhysX driver (Nvidia GPU drivers include the latter though). Properly uninstall the latter two, boot into safe mode and run Driver Sweeper or Driver Cleaner.NET in administrator mode (the latter premium program is far more thorough. Absolutely worth the low asking price, IMO.), finally boot into regular Windows and install the latest graphics and PhysX drivers.

doctorfrog on 17/11/2009 at 21:28

Galactic Civilizations 1: Ultimate Edition, $.99

Coupon Code = GC1ULTIMATE99

(http://www.impulsedriven.com/products/ESD-SDS-W224)

Note that this is for GalCiv ONE, not II. I was pretty excited for a while, there.

EDIT: Copying this to the actual bargain deals thread...

Enchantermon on 17/11/2009 at 23:30

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

I tired all that, but it still won't work.
Now, granted, I'm not trying to run the tech demo anymore; I went ahead and bought the full game. When I run it, it always does the same thing both before and after performing all of the steps you mentioned. It sits for a few seconds and then tells me that Pixel Shader 4.0 is not supported on my system, and so the game will launch without Advanced PhysX effects. I click OK, and then a second later Windows tells me that the program had stopped responding and forces it to close.
My graphics card is a GeForce Go 7300, which (according to Wikipedia, anyway) is pre-PhysX; although the error message would seem to indicate that the game can run without PhysX, could this possibly be part of the problem?

gunsmoke on 17/11/2009 at 23:46

So...it's a laptop? There's your problem.

Enchantermon on 17/11/2009 at 23:50

Well, yeah, but I've gotten other recent games working just fine on it (Dead Space, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Bioshock). I didn't think this would be a problem...

EvaUnit02 on 18/11/2009 at 11:07

7300 Go? Of course an integrated piece of crap like that won't be able to be play Cryostasis (IT doesn't support SM4.0/DX10).

Look at the readme, there might be command line parameters to force SM3.0 mode (DX9).

Even if you do manage to get it running, the game will likely be a slideshow. The optimisation is particularly bad (the game isn't multi-threaded). You need at least the equivalent of a 8800GT minimum.

Enchantermon on 18/11/2009 at 16:28

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

The optimisation is particularly bad (the game isn't multi-threaded).

Yeah, I found out this nice piece of news last night as I was poking around Google. A 2008 game that isn't multithreaded. This I cannot comprehend. Even if my graphics card was good enough to play it, my CPU isn't. It would be if both cores were used, but a single one only runs at 1.66 GHz. I'll just have to wait until I get a better computer. Thanks, though.

gunsmoke on 20/11/2009 at 20:04

You could have just poked around TTLG, instead of Google. This very here spot 'gengaming'. We have a thread on the game and talk plenty about how shitty it runs, even on dedicated GPUs on gaming desktops.

Enchantermon on 20/11/2009 at 21:31

Well, I did read the thread, but it never said anything about not supporting hyperthreading, and as the game apparently does support DX9, I figured it'd be worth a shot.