PC Game Requirements...please help.

[Leopardess]

My husband got the new Godfather game for his birthday and wanted to play it last night but we could tell something wasn't right with the graphics. The background is jerky and sometimes appears as a big grey screen. Fire will sometimes show up very realistically or will just be moving red/orange blocks. Basically, it's unplayable.

So today, while he's at work, I want to try to fix it for him. I looked at the requirements the game needs:

Windows XP or 2000
1.4GHz+ Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon Processor
256MB of RAM
2X DVD drive
5 GB free space
DirectX 9.0 compatible card: Must contain one of these T&L capable chipsets - ATI Radeon 8500+, NVIDIA GeForce or greater, except GeForce 4 MX

I have no clue about anything computery - so I tried to find if we had all that.

Here's what I found (that we have):

Windows XP 2002
AMD Anthlon XP 2800+
16X DVD Drive
2.08 GHz
448 MB of RAM
65.2 GB Free space (120 total)

I couldn't find the NVIDIA thing at first but upon thinking I looked at the sticker on the tower to find that we have NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX...the one thing we shouldn't.

So I googled NVIDIA and found their website...but I totally don't know what to download. I searched for GeForce and got all this crap:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/search.html?keywords=GeForce

The Download Drivers page has all this:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

I have no idea which of those I need...I just want whatever is the mininum to make the game work well. How can I fix this?? And a download should be free, right?

 

[DeputyChiefJR]

Graphics card: GeForce and TNT: Windows whatever you have...that should get you the current driver, but no guarantees that it'll solve any compatability issues

 

[Slick Fork]

You'll need a new graphics card, You can probably pick up a new one for pretty cheap. Don't go crazy with it though as the computer is old enough that you will probably want to upgrade in the near future (if you play lots of graphics intensive games). Adding some more RAM would probably make a big difference as well!

 

[DeputyChiefJR]

1 even cheaper idea is to buy a used XBox or PS2 and get the godfather for that.

 

[125gJoe]

RAM & Graphics card...

These days 1 Gig of RAM is about normal for game playing.
..That is, the graphic intense games....

Its not expensive to upgrade.



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[Leopardess]

This computer is only a couple of years old - with tons of space still left. We never use video games (in case you couldn't tell).

Every other new game we've ever tried on this works just fine....just seems this one won't *shrug*

As for the RAM thing....why? (I told you I know nothing). It's got 512 MB of RAM with 120 GB...I thought that was fine?

As for buying a game console - not something we're interested in at all. I just want to make this one game work.

 

[125gJoe]

This computer is only a couple of years old -... It's got 512 MB of RAM..

512 is not fine for game graphics.. JMO...

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[Leopardess]

I don't understand something, then. Why does it suggest 256 MB RAM on the packaging if you cannot even play it without 4X that amount? I thought my problem was the NVIDIA part.

 

[125gJoe]

I don't understand something, then. Why does it suggest 256 MB RAM on the packaging ....

That's the bare minimum of RAM...


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[Abilor]

This link tells all:
http://forums.techguy.org/games/453184-please-help-godfather-pc-graphics.html

In a nutshell, the engineers behind the game can't support your card. You'd need a new one.

I don't mean to be opportunist, I really don't, but I have an ATI 9800 PRO laying around that is useless to me from my old gaming machine. It's an AGP card, and needs an AGP 8X interface. Somewhere in your system information it should tell you if you have that on your motherboard. If you're interested in the card, I could let you have it for around $50 ( I bought it for $200 off ebay about two years ago, and that's the running rate these days for it). If you're not interested, I understand.

Either way, sorry to give bad tech news...