Intel GMA 950 and Orange Box

My friend recently bought the orange box and we tried to play it on his vaio with an intel GMA 950. I know that the gma 950 isn't really a gaming card, but the games don't even start or start but crash when loading a map. For example, in portal, we get to the first level but when you go through the portal, the game crashes. TF2,HL won't even load . I know that valve's games are famous for running on really old computers, so I was wondering if anyone experienced this before and offer some insight as to how to get these games to run.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, we tried updating directx and intel gma drivers and nothing changed....

 

It is probably because the games require hardware based Transform & Lighting, which is something the GMA was famous for lacking (they use software emulation!). Can you look up the requirements of the game and see if it mentions T&L?

 

I hope he didn't buy that laptop to play orange box on.

 

Is there any way to get around this, or is this something than can't be "patched". Well, I guess my friend will have to wait till he gets a new laptop to play those games, and I'll be sure to tell him to get a dedicated gpu instead of the integrated GMA.

 

Nope GMA 950 is pretty much hopeless for The Orange Box. Invest in a dedicated card like an 8400M or 8600 for gaming needs.

 

get a custom gaming desktop. they can be had for cheap. if you want, i could help you part it out on budget and build it for you (i could use a side job).

it would just be a couple hundred bucks and would outperform even some of the more powerful laptops (and would be upgradeable in the future)

pm me if you are interested.

 

Thanks for the offer, but I'm already in the custom gaming desktop scene and was just wondering if there was any way to get it working on his comp. Next year I am going to college so me and him are getting laptops anyway.

 

Keep the sales in the PM system or BST, but the efforts are appreciated!

As for the HW T&L...there is no way around it, since no software layer is going to perform well enough. However, I could be wrong about the requirements so there might be something else wrong here.

 

Maybe a custom config file to make it look like crap.. but after a quick look at how complicated they are (c0mpared to other games) i seriously doubt it would be worth the hours of effort

It could work though if the maps actually load like you said