Red Alert 3

EA's system analysis tool suggests I can't run C&C Red Alert 3 on my Compaq Evo N620c. The only weakness in this system is its ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card, which does not support pixel shaders and only supports vertex shaders 1.1. Other than that the system should be fine. Does anyone know if graphics features of RA3 can be disabled to run on a system crippled by an outdated graphics card? Or is it time to start looking at an Elitebook 6930p after 5 good years from the Evo?

 

I think you'd have a better chance running the game if it were the vertex shader ability that's missing and not the pixel shader.. Although I think I used a program back in my integrated video gaming days that emulated hardware pixel and vertex shader and TnL. IIRC the thing was called 3DAnalyze, or 3DAnalyzer.. Or perhaps you should also try SoftShader, is it? Yeah.

 

I tried 3DAnalyze, and unfortunately due to the way RA3 launches it seems like there's no way to use it on the program. The only EXE file is a launcher that doesn't seem to do anything. I'll have to keep looking around for another software vertex/pixel shader solution...it's really too bad that Compaq decided to cripple the Evo 620 with the ATI Radeon 7500 which was a generation out of date when the 620 was introduced...but as far as I can tell the 620 was just a stop-gap model to bridge the time until the HP nc6000 replaced it (though every one of those I've seen has looked pretty awful).

 

That card is in the GMA 950 range. It's clearly incapable of running RA3.

 

I know, I was hoping to find a software workaround that would make up for the crippled graphics card this machine has.

 

is that processor even capable of playing RA3? I always thought the RA games were pretty cpu taxing.

 

yeah im pretty sure they are i had a large army and i mean large(LOOK BELOW VIDEO) in C&C generals and my cpu couldnt handle it or gpu i think....my gpu is not even that bad so i guess my cpu wasnt powerful enough to render all the units my frames went from 67fps to a average of 29fps and in battle about 14fps.................. so yeah a good cpu is needed....


watch HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYd3qPHQug

 

According to EA's system evaluator tool the processor should be fine for RA3. Something faster would obviously be better, but a 1.6 Pentium M isn't terrible.

 

actually that's pretty awful... I had a 2.0ghz pentium in my 2004 Dell (desktop), and that thing struggled on games back then, let alone an almost brand new game.

 

I beg to disagree! (oops, too violent a reaction? heheh) I used to have a Lenovo laptop and it played RA3 albeit really slow..I think the GMA 950 has shader 2.0, I think I read it somewhere, although what it does not have is Hardware TnL, which is nearly necessary in playing RA3. I did not use 3DAnalyze with it, so yeah.

About 3DAnalyze failing in RA3, btw, what settings did you use? How about SoftShader, have you used them yet? You'll just have to paste the two .dll files in the EXE directory and that should take care of it.

 

hi, can you please tell me where to find softshader and how to use them? you said to post the two .dll files in the EXE directory which is located where? i tried 3d analyzer and im still kinda new to it.

 

Absolutely no help to you whatsoever but just want to say this game is a blast!

However I think they considerably underpowered the Soviets with the latest patch.

 

Vacuum Imploder is like a nuke with the mushroom cloud removed. lol

 

anyone? i have the same problem as matt, 7500 ati radeon in a ibm laptop wanting to run ra3!