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Video Card Suggestions?

by Dan Shea · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 08/15/2007 (1:44 pm) · 4 replies

Hi everybody, I'm very new to Torque and I seem to be having some problems just getting started. My client used to crash on start up a lot and when I finally got a chance to do some debugging I figured out (or at least thought I did) that my problems were stemming from my version of DirectX. So I updated that and now when I run Torque I get the message:

"Failed to initialize Direct3D! Make sure you have DirectX 9 installed, and are running a graphics card that supports Pixel Shader 1.1."

Since I already updated DirectX and my other drivers I'm inclined to believe its my video card (or lack thereof). I'm currently running purely from the on-board video processor on my motherboard, which had no problem with TGE, but simply can't handle the Advanced version. Now, before I go out and invest in a new video card I just wanted to make sure I was getting one that I know would work and of course, who would know better than those who use this software already. So really, I'm just wondering if you all have any suggestions for what card to get, preferably from a few different price ranges. I'll need PCI-Express by the way.

Thanks!
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Torque 3D Owner Kenneth Holst
Default Studio Name
#1
08/15/2007 (2:34 pm)
You should be ok on the ATi side with an X300 (at the lowest possible end) to the highest they make. On the Nvidia side, I would recommend getting a 7600 GT or better.

Obviously performance will vary based on how much money you throw at the card :)

Hope this helps

Torque 3D Owner Morrie
#2
08/15/2007 (3:04 pm)
Nvidia 8800 GTX

Torque Owner Dan Shea
#3
08/15/2007 (3:11 pm)
Thanks for the quick replies! I'll give your suggestions a closer look.

Torque Owner Edward A. Kimsa-Rowntree
#4
09/26/2007 (9:49 am)
While it's probably too late, their suggestions are rather advanced. The minimum on the ATi side you need is a Radeon 9700 Pro (first of the shader 2 cards). I'm not too sure about which card on the nVidia side was the first to support shader 2, but basically anything with DirectX 9 support will do. That covers 5 years (the span of time since the 9700 Pro's release) so any fairly recent card can do the job.

Of note, Intel Graphics cards lie about shader support, and will crash on some operations. My team discovered this during our project a month or two ago. It will say it can support things like ambient occlusion or bump mapping when polled, but they always crash it. Turning off those features in our game made it work.

- Feynt