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"Prince of Persia Sands of Time videocard..Heeeeeeeeeelp:•)"

Hi I have recently installed Prince of Persia sands etc... but i got an error message about my videocard. I have the one (GeForce4MX 440) that is not compatible with the game...i have looked on nvidia site and there are loads of graphics cards....so anyone one know which is the one i need? can i download it? if yes, where? or... do i have to go out (gulp)! and buy one myself!!!???? same questions...which one and where from?
please make it realy simple explanation because i lose the plot when it starts getting realy techy....thanks in advance.

Bonus wrote:

> Only problem with buying a DX8.1 compatible card now is that very
> soon, games will be released which are DX9 only, meaning you will
> need to upgrade again.

That is not strictly true. Almost all of the big upcoming games, 'next gen' games if you want to call them that, HL2, Doom 3 etc won't require a DX 9 video card - both of those games for example have separate rendering paths written specifically for DX8 hardware - basically if the hardware doesn't comply to what the program wants to do, it'll just drop back to the lower code path.

I can't think of a single game that will be released this year (and actually sometime into next year) that will require a fully compliant DX 9 card. In fact, can anyone name a single game on any developer’s roadmap that will require DX9 level hardware?

I doubt it.

Even if you got the game to work you might get graphics errors. My friend has a MX440 and when we played Sand of Time the screen was all pixelated and you couldnt see properly. Quite a few games have done this and these are the games that say "dont support MX440".

Whats the rest of your PC like? If its a decent CPU and RAM then try and get a 9600 XT as that will last you quite a while, rather than getting a cheap budget card. If the CPU and RAM are pretty low spec then it might be an idea to upgrade the whole system, especially if you want to play the latest games.

Not quite, you don't need to know what directX is as I'm sensing it would be extremely hard to explain it in a way you'd understand. You just need to accept that DirectX is a feature of graphics cards, and yours doesn't have any support for the version of it that SoT needs.

OMG...lets just slow things down here....lol! Thanks again Pandaemonium, i will follow your instructions and see what happens first before i face up to the alarming statement from Bonus about my buget video card :(
but as i understand you Bonus, Directex is another make of card and it's better?? hmmm

yesmam wrote:
> Thanks Pandaemonium....i did start to glaze over a bit....anyway i
> have gone to the nvidia site through bob_moose link (i agree to try
> that first before standing in the shop trying to fathom it all
> out)...anyway on the download drivers page in box 1 i have a choice
> from 6 driver selections...tut...please i need a download driver
> walkthrough...lol!
> >>-----(*_*)--->

for a geforce 4 mx.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp ->
click "Graphics Driver" ->
click "Geforce and Tnt2" ->
click your operating system ->
click "Go" ->
click "Primary Download Site" ->
Scroll down and click "Accept" ->
save the file to a location on your hard disk ->
Run it when completed.

;)

The Geforce 4 MX card will not play Prince Of Persia.

Prince Of Persia needs features of DirectX 8.1 to be supported by the hardware, and unfortunately for you the Nvidia MX range of cards are budget versions of the bigger cards and therefore do not support DirectX 8.1.

I know this because my dad has one.

If you want a cheap card look for an ATI 9200 which will work, look for an ATI 9200 which will work.

That's the cheapest budget card which will do what you want.

You will also not be able to play Slinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Halo (I think :S) and many other up to date games.

Only problem with buying a DX8.1 compatible card now is that very soon, games will be released which are DX9 only, meaning you will need to upgrade again.

Thanks Pandaemonium....i did start to glaze over a bit....anyway i have gone to the nvidia site through bob_moose link (i agree to try that first before standing in the shop trying to fathom it all out)...anyway on the download drivers page in box 1 i have a choice from 6 driver selections...tut...please i need a download driver walkthrough...lol!
>>-----(*_*)--->

yesmam wrote:
> Thanks Mr moose :) i'll try that now

I've just today set up my bosses machine today with a geforce 400MX card I'm selling him, and tried various games to see how it runs with the latest Nvidia drivers (The base is a celeron 850Mhz)

Vice city, call of duty and UT2003 are all playable 640 x 480, abet a little slow, but Sands of Time refuses to work at all.

The Pixel shader and vertex shaders on the card are not powerful enough.

[edit] "because i lose the plot when it starts getting realy techy"

Sorry. Lapsed into jargon :)

You're going to have to buy and fit a new graphics card to play the game.

Thanks Mr moose :) i'll try that now

Ok first, downloading a graphics card is like downloading a monitor. It's a physical componant of your computer, so you can't just get one sent down your phone line, unless your line's really really fat and there's someone to crawl behind it pushing it all the way to your house. You can however, download drivers which are peices of software that basically tell the hardware what to do.
I don't know if the GF4 MX series are powerful enough to run Sands of Time, but first try downloading the latest drivers from [URL] http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp [/URL]. If that doesn't work then it looks like you'll have to upgrade it, but it's best to worry about that only if you need to.