Compatibility notes - nVidia card

[screetch]

we are not aware of any bug related to nVidia cards at the moment.

Please note that the GeForce4 MX isn't supported by the game because it doesn't have pixel/vertex shading support.

[screetch]

Pixel Shaders is a hardware feature and is only supported by certain Geforce and Quadro NVIDIA based graphic cards. The following list of NVIDIA based graphic cards do not support Pixel Shaders (all other cards support this feature):

NVIDIA Riva 128

NVIDIA Riva TNT

NVIDIA Riva TNT2 M64/TNT2/TNT2 Pro/TNT2 Ultra

NVIDIA Vanta

NVIDIA Geforce256 DDR/SDR

NVIDIA Geforce2 GTS/Pro/Ultra/Ti200

NVIDIA Geforce2 MX/MX100/MX200/MX400

NVIDIA Geforce4 MX/MX4000

NVIDIA Quadro

NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro

NVIDIA Quadro NVS

NVIDIA Quadro4 280XGL/380XGL/550XGL

NVIDIA Geforce2 Go

NVIDIA Geforce4 Go

NVIDIA Quadro2 Go

NVIDIA Quadro4 500 Go

(thanx to ColeUK for posting this list)

[John Chi]

Okay I tried playing skirmish in URBAN TERROR today with 1 AI teammate and 2 AI enemies. The whole screen just went all pixilated then everything just stoped. I have a Geforce 6800 GT 128mb with the latest 71.84 driver installed. My processor is P4 3.2 GHZ and I have 2 GIGS of RAM. I was playing at 1280 x 1024 resolution at 75 khz. Had 4x AA, 2x AF, and vertical sync was set to application controlled.

This map was fine yesterday but I was playing 1 vs 1 AI so it could have something to do with the number of AIs in that one map.

[Jung67]

I bought the game yesteday but it doesn't work!
When i launch it from the desktop , i have "Act of war has got a problem and must close"
I don't think it's my config:
WinXP
Pentium 4 (3.1 GHz)
512MB
Geforce Ti 4200 with AGP8

Please help me! :frownblue

[ColeUK]

The problem isn't your graphics card, as according to nVidia the only Ti family of cards that have a problem are then following:

Geforce3 Ti 200, Geforce3 Ti 500

so I don't know what to suggest, sorry.

[PqLear]

Also, to elaborate a little on what's said in the game readme file about the GeForce FX cards -- I've seen some people having problems with performance with this card. This is an earlier post from one of the R&D guys at Eugen.

"It is a fact that the GeForce FX familiy of cards is only about 50% as fast as the Radeon 9700+ family of cards when running Pixel Shader 2.0 or above. The guys from Valve were the first to point out this fact and reveal the scandalously low performance figures concerning the FX familiy with PS2.0. Act of War uses a mix of PS1.x and PS2.0 shaders, but when lighting is set to high, most shaders are PS2.0, and this will give sub-par performance on the FX family of cards, because of the amount of detail that is shown on screen.

When the lighting is set to Low on a PS2.0 compatible card (e.g. the FX family), some PS2.0 effects still remain, such as the water, but the shadow rendering pass is removed, and most models are displayed using PS1.x. In this case, the performance should be very good. This default value is selected for the GeForce FX family of cards.

If the user chooses to set the lighting to a higher notch, the game will not run smoothly. It is unlikely that any game using full PS2 shaders for all objects and terrain models and displaying a substantial amount of detail in resolutions higher than 1024x768 will ever achieve a good framerate using a GeForce FX card.

What's worse: it is unlikely than any game using full PS2.0, even with a low amount of detail, will even achieve high framerates using the GeForce FX 5200 card - but thanks to nVidia, even if the performance is not up to par, at least there is PS2.0 compatibility.

The perception that GeForce FX cards could keep up against radeons 9800's was true at the time the cards came out because almost all games and benchmarks used T&L and/or PS1.x (e.g. Quake 3, Unreal, Warcraft 3, most of 3DMark2003, Comanche 4...) It is not true today.

However, nVidia has managed to return in the performance battle against ATI with the 6800. I hope this has given you more information about why a seemingly mid-end card as the GeForce FX is not able to produce to required performance on AoW mid and high shadow/lighting settings.

Running the game in medium mode is about twice as expensive as low mode, and running it at high mode is about 25% more expensive as medium mode."

[Jung67]

so what shall i do?

[ColeUK]

Honestly don't know mate. This game seems to have some major graphics card problems that the developers don't forsee when they made the decision to use Pixel Shader.

I'd suggest taking the game back to the shops mate.

[gozbold]

hi all,

Is the Geforce 4 MX 420 included in the non compatable list?

I cant even get it throw up an error. when i double click my desk top icon it just sits there and does nothing.:(

[ColeUK]

Yes, any of the GeForce4 MX family of cards. This includes the GeForce4 MX 420.

Crappy eh.

[Mobilemick]

If NVidia cant sort this out, or maybe they dont want you to, Leaving you with the only option of buying a shiny new updated card,
Then they will end up like the Voodoo cards, GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.
We the customers pay your wages, get it sorted..
Ti
Mick

[ColeUK]

Well Voodoo didn't really go out of business they were bought by nVidia. But you are right, it is a bit odd that they (nVidia) don't have pixel shader through-out all of it's products but the MX class of chip was designed to be a 'cheaper' nVidia card. So by some how not including Pixel Shader and a few other bits this makes it a cheaper product.

This doesn't make up for the game developers lack in research into what cards do support this technology. On the box it does clearly state that the game will not support GeForce4 MX cards. What it DOESN'T do is also tell you about the other dozen or so nVidia cards that are not supported. Now that is just nVidia I'm sure there are other cards that are not supported as well. I reckon the game was developed for the ATI card. Leaving anyone with anything else to fend for themselves.

[Mobilemick]

Paid near £100 for me GF4. wouldnt say it was a cheap one, but i see what u mean.,

Any recommends on which card to Buy,

Tia
Mick

[ColeUK]

Honestly don't know mate, normaly I would have said nVidia or ATI but I guess the best answer to give would be any. Provided your willing to spend the money to get a highend card of your chosen make.

Sorry I'm not more helpful.

[Kiev_Axe]

will i run the game at max setting smoothly, on 1280 by 1024, with max shadow, texture. lighting etc on a Stock 6800 (non GT non ULTRA, but above a SE)
+ 2.6 p4 @800 fsb + 1 gig ddr 400?

[ColeUK]

Not sure I understand your question. Your specs seem to be fine for running the game - so it would all depend on your graphics card, if your card supports Pixel Shader 1.0 or above then your one of the lucky ones.

[Kiev_Axe]

Well i mentioend my video card...obvisouyl its a shader 3.0 card.
My question is, inspite of all the problems are having when running shadows on max..ie killing FPS...will my card be good enogh to run it with full shadows wihtout sarcifcing too much fps.

(I only get the game in a few days)

[screetch]

Known problem with nvidia cards : the ingame videos can be buggy. If it's the case (it seems it only happens with GF4 TI) then upgrading to the latest drivers has always solved the problem.

Kiev axe : most likely, but i dont have a 6800 near me to confirm; It should work OK with all settings max.

[Peoples-Agent]

All ok here on a 6800 GT, just cant use the damn patches ...grrh

[juggernaught]

HI !
had the above mentionned probs with my fx5700 and farcry, solved them by disabling fsaa and lowering the "light", you must take both steps to get rid of this issue.
I now have a 6600gt agp, works fine with all settings on max, 1280x1024 32bits color: AOW runs between 30 and 70 fps. Nvidia FX series is just plain ****.
Hope this helps

[gilamaniac]

i got the same problem as Jung67 but in my case i'm using gf4 mx 440. whenever i start the game i will get the error message and will have to shut off immediately.

all i want to know is whether that error occur because of the GF4 mx 440 that i'm using or some other unidentify problems.

please advise, thanks

[screetch]

geforce 4 mx areb't supported by the game. they don't have hardware accelerated pixel or vertex shader

[Peoples-Agent]

Time for an ugrade for sure, I haven't used one of those cards for years.

[Peoples-Agent]

Originally posted by Jung67
I bought the game yesteday but it doesn't work!
When i launch it from the desktop , i have "Act of war has got a problem and must close"
I don't think it's my config:
WinXP
Pentium 4 (3.1 GHz)
512MB
Geforce Ti 4200 with AGP8

Please help me! :frownblue

Have you seen the threads I have put up, follow the instructions there!

[blabla]

Hi I just got banned for swearing!!!!

[Peoples-Agent]

Whats your problem, someone ban this THING!!

Nobody selling anything around here dude.

[Infinity]

Runs great on XFX geforce6800 ultra PCI-Express LCD monitor at max resolution 1280x960, does'nt make the AI any smarter though LOL but i'll save that for another part of the forum.

[ZAK]

Hi,
I know that I've not the right graphic cards... I've an old NVIDIA Geforce2 MX/MX400 with integrated RAMDAC (32MB).
The game starts without any "graphics" problems but when I try to load any missions, changing the screen, several message appears, as:

EA access violation in module ACTOFWAR.EXE at 006825E 3
(call stack : 00A835E3)

This is just one of them, any time I try to start a mission, the "address" of the stack is different.

Could it be due to the wrong graphic card or is a "program" failure?

Please let me know something asap.

Thanks and.... sorry for my poor english.

Ciao
ZAK





:cool:

[maCaow]

anybody else got this problem:

http://members.inode.at/m.loschin/aow.JPG

plz help :/

[Peoples-Agent]

Information for FX card owners.....

I would suggest you try out the drivers created by Extreme G over at www.tweaksrus.com , the older 67.66s .....as part of the install process have optimisations encoded into the .inf to get the best performance / Image Quality ratio you are ever going to.

Try them, but make sure you nab a copy of driver cleaner first ....uninstall current drivers via add / remove programs, reboot into safe mode....run driver cleaner to delete the files relating to nvidia, reboot into windows and then install the new driver set , this prevents any possible chance of driver cross over!!!

Infact, the XG drivers are fantastic and couldn't recommend them enough to anyone, my fps are alot higher aswell as the image quality with these.

- D -

[screetch]

maCaow : what's your hardware exactly???

most likely you haven't got enough video memory to run the game fully, my guess is that you had another program eating up video memory somewhere. If the settings are set to high, pu them to low and try again.

[maCaow]

Originally posted by screetch
maCaow : what's your hardware exactly???

most likely you haven't got enough video memory to run the game fully, my guess is that you had another program eating up video memory somewhere. If the settings are set to high, pu them to low and try again.

Its already solved! I installed detonator vers. 67.66 and now it works

[Peoples-Agent]

See, told ya they would do the trick!!

BRILLIANT set of drivers, they should have been an official set.

[batteries]

Man there are so many cards this game does not suport wouldn't it have been easyer to list the cards it does work with rather that the ones that dont. I haven't got a clue what to buy i would say an ati card but even some of them dont work. Carn't take the game back as its been opened. This is the first time i have come accross this problem. I think they should have reserched the affects of the fancy shadeing on graphics cards before actually releasing the game. Talk about alianating your customers all for some nice looking shadows and smoke

[Peoples-Agent]

That's the name of the game....

What keeps the cogs ticking over in the tech world so dated stuff goes into the bin , new things are bought and evolution continues.

Best value card to go for at the moment I say for those on a budget would be the GeForce 6600 GT ....good performer that packs a punch for not much more than £100. Very good deal.

If your in the UK , www.scan.co.uk have some great prices, but DONT be tricked into buying the 256MB non GT version as they performer far worse than the higher end 128MB GT model.

- D -

[batteries]

just one thing my friend new tecnolagy bin old blar blar my mates got an nVidia card that is substandard the game works on so whos that?? I no its substandard cos i sold him it.

[Peoples-Agent]

I was recommending him to buy a new card so he could get the best from the game and many others.....

So what your saying is, because you sold someone a **** card that runs the game that buying a better one is bad advice?

Wow genius... sold, im canning my card to go back to a GeForce 3 !!
WTF.... Things move on, games progress and technology of the past gets crapper day by day, its evolution dude.... and out of interest what card was it you sold him?

EDIT: .....and your technical decipher astounds me.
Obviously you 8888up on getting around that Speak and Spell as a kid because it didn't work for you much did it.

[Dazza40]

I recently bought this game,and installed fine ,played video sequences etc,went to gameplay and was horrified to find large areas of playing map "greyed out",have sent an email about this but no reply yet,i have also downloaded latest patch,and tried different video setting in game but still same problem???.Incidently don't have problems with other games on PC,hope there's a remedy for this,otherwise i will have to return what seems to be a good game. :frownblue

[sdack]

Since this is a thread for owners of NVidia cards only, and after reading all the comments, I want to tell you: It is cool to see a game not supporting NVidia. :p:

Sven

[Peoples-Agent]

ATI Fanboy ...take your irrelevant dribble elsewhere, for a so called more mature person who went through the mystique, s3 virge era your actually quite "backward" minded arent you.

nVidia cards are great .....as are ATI cards, end of !
Why does it float your boat to gloat over an nVidia card not working on a title well? ..Are you a sadist? .....bet your the kind of guy who goes upto little kids in wheelchairs dancing arent you!!

No realm for fanboys round here, keep that for the damn Catalyst forums .....as if you got nothing good to say, don't say it! .....did you mention you bought a 6800LE ? ...Mr Technical minded expert here bought a Lite Edition card, knowing too well they are cut down varieties mainly aimed at the OEM user. And ATI are the worst culprits for this in reality.

Rant over! Good day sir .......

PS: It's good to see so called technical CLEVER people buying LE cards!! Now THATS cool!

[sdack]

ATI Fanboy ...take your irrelevant dribble elsewhere, for a so called more mature person who went through the mystique, s3 virge era your actually quite "backward" minded arent you.
Sorry, but that is not me.

nVidia cards are great .....as are ATI cards, end of !
Why does it float your boat to gloat over an nVidia card not working on a title well? ..Are you a sadist? .....bet your the kind of guy who goes upto little kids in wheelchairs dancing arent you!!
That is cynical and I would not do that.

No realm for fanboys round here, keep that for the damn Catalyst forums .....as if you got nothing good to say, don't say it! .....did you mention you bought a 6800LE ? ...Mr Technical minded expert here bought a Lite Edition card, knowing too well they are cut down varieties mainly aimed at the OEM user. And ATI are the worst culprits for this in reality.

Rant over! Good day sir .......
Sorry, but you are the parrot who went into the fan. :)

PS: It's good to see so called technical CLEVER people buying LE cards!! Now THATS cool!
I would have bought it, but I decided for a 9800PRO. That was a decision for safety. Taking a risk is not always fun. Btw, you are a fanboy.

Sven

[Ramius]

Hey, Is there any way except replacing your card if you have a GeForce MX card to get the game running? :confused:

[Peoples-Agent]

Could try using a program called 3D Analyse, think that has already been mentioned though, not too sure how it works but google it !!

As for the previous quarrels, I am past flaming and arguing....

But do look out for that 3D Analyse program , it has got some games working against the odds on older hardware at the expense of eye candy , but im sure your just be happy to be playing.

[chris]

we are not aware of any bug related to nVidia cards at the moment.

Please note that the GeForce4 MX isn't supported by the game because it doesn't have pixel/vertex shading support.

please help. I hav a GeForce4 MX 440 and even though it doesnt support pixel shadings most games have the option of turning it off. If there isnt a way in the options menu is there a way to turn it off manually?? plz help me find a way as ive been waiting a generous amount of time for this game and cannot afford a new card. plz help

[sdack]

please help. I hav a GeForce4 MX 440 and even though it doesnt support pixel shadings most games have the option of turning it off. If there isnt a way in the options menu is there a way to turn it off manually?? plz help me find a way as ive been waiting a generous amount of time for this game and cannot afford a new card. plz help
I am sorry to tell you that no one will help you. The MX440 is listed as one of the cards not being supported by this game. However, someone mentioned that there would be a tool somewhere on the internet, that can do tricks and could help. I wouldn't bet on it. Search the threads for more information (I do not really believe that there is such a tool ...).

Other games, i.e. Splinter Cell 3 support Shader Model 1.1 & 3.0 but not 2.0, making the game look bad on ATI cards. Act of War, only supporting Model 2.0, is making NVidia cards look bad. Halflife 2 can be played on anything supporting DX7 to DX9, making other game engines look bad ...

It is disappointing. The options you have is to either return the game or do get a new GFX card.

Sven

[onequestion]

I've got a AOpen 6800 GT 256MB AGP, on a AMD 64 3500. I played for quite a while now and it seems that the smoke coming from the large objects (when there are lots of smoke) the smoke becomes a black square block rotating and there is no way to see through it.

Is it supposed to be like that or not? - it looks to me like crappy graphics or something might be wrong on my game or comp. :mad:

The graphics on the back of the box looks so much better! what is going on! My AA-AF and such are on application-controlled. V-Sync is ON and Image Quality is HIGH on the drivers settings....

oh and I'm using 71.24

-----------
They don't happen constantly, but when it does appear (the blocks) it flashes between blocky smoke and nice normal smoke! It is very annoying!

Here is a shot of it - my heli just got shot down

http://www.searo.net/aowSCR.jpg

[Peoples-Agent]

That's normally relating to IQ on your graphics drivers.....

What version are you using out of interest??

[onequestion]

That's normally relating to IQ on your graphics drivers.....

What version are you using out of interest??

who are you talking to...? - me or... :confused:


==============================================
nevermind.....

issue resolved by upgrading my drivers to 71.89

[sdack]

who are you talking to...? - me or... :confused:


==============================================
nevermind.....

issue resolved by upgrading my drivers to 71.89
Not being able to see through smoke is a feature of the game and yes, it's annoying.

The smoke could have been rendered in a better way, but it then might have eaten up gfx power than would be good for the game. It looks like a compromise.

Sven

EDIT:
I would not say it is broken. It does not flash to blocks. From here it is very difficult to say if it is a problem just on your side. Send in a screenshot to Atari and ask directly (press PrtScr-key for screenshots).

[yannack]

Hello,
I have a Geforce4 420Go, and when I try loading the game, it says my card doesn't support vertex or pixel shaders. But my card is supposed to be compatible. I have the latest XTremeG drivers (unofficial forceware and optimized), as the official forceware do not support laptop cards.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

[screetch]

Well there are some bugs with smoke : for example a small wooden turret that burst like a nuke and throws flames and smoke as if it was filled with dynamites...

but for buildings it's normal

[almirante88]

Sorry...i have nvidia geforce fx go5650 with 64 mb ....but the game doesn't work....when i launch a mission i see the ground of the map gray...and also my unit are gray... i can see only tree and water and car with a good detail...someone can help me? :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[screetch]

try to lower the shadow setting, or update your video drivers

[Rikerater]

hi !

I have a problem,

when I installed the game it played good BUT when the newest patch came
tha game plays like there is enormous lag. even when I am playing single player. :frownblue

** i have:

pentium 4 (3,0 GHz, 800fsb, 1mb cache )
1024 DDR400 Dual channel memory (2x512)
160 GB sata hardisk
256 MB PCI-Express nVidia Geforce 6800

do you have a solution ?

Rick

[Rikerater]

hi

can you guys help me ?

when does there come a new patch ?

my problem can you see the previous post

it is 4 days agoo when i posted my problem

Rick

[Baz]

So the GeForce FX 5200 will run this game?

Baring in mind that i don't have XP so i can't download the detonator drivers :madred:

[hunter64]

Hello!

Like everyone else in this thread, I too have a problem. I bought, installed and patched the game, yet the gray fields still dominate my map. I have a GeForce FX 5500 with the latest drivers. I also have all the in game setting as low as they will go. How can I get this running? If I can't use my video card, could you suggest a few ones that would be relatively cheap, but still somewhat higher-end? Thanks!

[Rube]

Hi all,

Just read the rest of this topic and it doesn't look good for Nvidia, but I just bought this game yesterday and am having problems with the in-game videos and the one on the title screen. My game plays fine and I dont have many of the problems everyone else has but my videos are juddery and annoying to watch, I think someone else mentioned that above. Im using 2x 6800GT's in SLI so I shouldn't be getting many problems. Anyone know a fix for this? I'd be very grateful if someone could take the time to help me. Thanks in advance.

P.s. Im running the very latest drivers 77.77 and it's also the same with 77.76.

[Rube]

mdr1 !! BUMP !! mdr1

[rich20scott]

Im using a Geforce FX5500 256MB DDR AGP card, the game starts with no probs but when i start a game it shows the map and units but with grey patchs all over, is there any fix for this.

rich