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POTC on my Laptop

Captain-Gwynn

Landlubber
Okay here is my problem, I would really like to play POTC on my laptop which is far more powerful then my P2 500 desktop.
The Game gets as far as the load new game screen and then just stops and the keyboard stops working.

Laptop:
Compaq Presario 3080US
P4 2.40 mhz
64mb SiS M650 graphics card (lates update from their site) <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/bookish.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":mm" border="0" alt="bookish.gif" />
448 mb ram

So I am at a loss as to why it won't work.
SeaDogs plays with no problem.

It it will play on my decktop:
P2 500 mhz
64mb Radeon 7200 graphics card
256 mb ram

The game would go so much better on the laptop, and I carry it with me when I travel (which is often).

Some one please help!!!!!!
 
What version of DirectX does your video card support?
I believe you require a DX7 or above compatible card for POTC (you need DX8 support to get the nice `pixel-shaded` water effects).
 
Right. But what version of directx does your card _support_?
In other words, how many, if any, 3D acceleration features does it have?
{google}
Humph. Says it supports DX7.1. Maybe POTC needs DX8 after all? :
 
I have even down loaded the directX fix and installed it. I have reinstalled the game and still same problem.

The only thing I have not yet tryed is to install build 11 and try that. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />

I will try that now and see.
 
Yeah. Good luck though, it's pretty poor. :
But we can ask around here.

Loudspeaker mode: HEY! ANYONE HERE RUNNING POTC ON A DX7 VIDEOCARD?
How to tell?
*Is it old?
*Do you not get nice looking water? (i.e. no light reflections)

{Can't help ya there, I have a GF4 that's `second-gen` DX8 compliant. : }
 
SiS M650 Overview

SiS M650 IGUI Host Memory Controller integrates a high performance host interface for Intel Pentium 4 processor, a high performance 2D/3D Graphic Engine, a high performance memory controller, an AGP 4X interface, and SiS MuTIOL Technology connecting w/ SiS961 MuTIOL Media IO.

SiS M650 Host Interface features the AGTL & AGTL+ compliant bus driver technology with integrated `on-die` termination to support Intel Pentium 4 series processors with FSB 100MHz and over clocking up to 133MHz. SiS M650 provides a `12-level` `In-Order`-Queue to support maximum outstanding transactions up to 12. It integrated a high performance 2D/3D Graphic Engine, Video Accelerator and Advanced Hardware Acceleration MPEGI/MPEGII Video Decoder for the Intel Pentium 4 series based PC systems. It also integrates a high performance 2.7GB/s DDR333 Memory controller to sustain the bandwidth demand from the integrated GUI or external AGP master, host processor, as well as the multi I/O masters. In addition to integrated GUI, SiS M650 also can support external AGP slot with AGP 1X/2X/4X capability and Fast Write Transactions. A high bandwidth and mature SiS MuTIOL technology is incorporated to connect SiS M650 and SiS961 MuTIOL Media I/O together. SiS MuTIOL technology is developed into three layers, the `Multi-threaded` I/O Link Layer delivering 1.2GB bandwidth to connect embedded DMA Master devices and external PCI masters to interface to `Multi-threaded` I/O Link layer, the `Multi-threaded` I/O Link Encoder/Decoder in SiS961 to transfer data w/ 533 MB/s bandwidth from/to `Multi-threaded` I/O Link layer to/from SiS M650, and the `Multi-threaded` I/O Link Encoder/Decoder in SiS M650 to transfer data w/ 533 MB/s from/to `Multi-threaded` I/O Link layer to/from SiS961.

The memory controller can support both DDR and SDR. It can offer bandwidth up to 2.7GB/s under DDR333, 2GB/s under DDR266 and 1GB/s under PC 133 in order to sustain the bandwidth demand from host processor, as well as the multi I/O masters and AGP masters. Delivering a high performance data transfer to/from memory subsystem from/to the Host processor, the integrated graphic engine or external AGP master, or the I/O bus masters. The memory controller also supports the Suspend to RAM function by retaining the CKE# pins asserted in ACPI S3 state in which only AUX source deliver power. The SiS M650 adopts the Shared Memory Architecture, eliminating the need and thus the cost of the frame buffer memory by organizing the frame buffer in the system memory. The frame buffer size can be allocated from 8MB to 64MB.

The Integrated GUI features a high performance 3D accelerator with 2 Pixel / 4 Texture, and a 128 bit 2D accelerator with 1T pipeline BITBLT engine. It also features a Video Accelerator and advanced hardware acceleration logic to deliver high quality DVD playback. A Dual 12- bit DDR digital video link interfaced to the Video Bridge is incorporated to expand the SiS M650 functionality to support the LCD or TV display. The CRT display and the LCD or TV display can be supported by the Dual View Capability, in the other words that both can generate the display in independent resolutions, color depths, and frame rates. Two separate buses, `Host-t`-GUI in the width of 64 bit, and `GUI-t`-Memory Controller in the width of 128 bit are devised to ensure concurrency of `Host-t`-GUI streaming, and `GUI-t`-MC streaming. In PC133, DDR266 or DDR333 memory subsystem, the 128 bit `GUI-t`-MC bus will attain the AGP4X, AGP 8X equivalent or higher texture transfer rate, respectively. The Memory Controller mainly comprises the Memory Arbiter, the `M-data`/`M-Command` Queues, and the Memory Interface. The Memory Arbiter arbitrates a plenty of memory access requests from the GUI or AGP controller, Host Controller, and I/O bus masters based on a default optimized priority list with the capability of dynamically prioritizing the I/O bus master requests in a bid to offering privileged service to 1) the isochronous downstream transfer to guarantee the min. latency & timely delivery, or 2) the PCI master upstream transfer to curb the latency within the maximum tolerant period of 10us. Prior to the memory access requests pushed into the `M-data` queue, any command compliant to the paging mechanism is generated and pushed into the `M-CMD` queue. The `M-data`/`M-CMD` Queues further orders and forwards these queuing requests to the Memory Interface in an effort to utilizing the memory bandwidth to its utmost by scheduling the command requests in the background when the data requests streamlines in the foreground.
Key features
PC2001 Compliance
High Performance Host Interface
- Support Intel Pentium 4 series CPU with data transfer rate of 533/400 MHz.
- AGTL+ & AGTL compliant bus driver auto compensation

64 Bit High Performance DDR333/DDR266/PC133 Memory Controller
- Supports DDR333/DDR266/200 SDRAM or PC133/100 SDRAM
- Support Up to 2 `un-buffered` DIMM DDR333 or up to 3 `un-buffered` `Double-sided` DIMM DDR266/200
- Up to 1 GB per DIMM with max. memory size up to 3 GB
- Dynamic Clock Enable (CKE) control placing the SDRAM into Suspend to DRAM state
- High performance unified memory controller optimizing the DRAM bus utilization
- Programmable frame buffer size from 8MB and up to 64MB
- Sustains DDR SDRAM CAS Latency at options of 2, 2.5, & 3 clocks

Integrated A.G.P. Compliant Target/66Mhz `Host-to`-PCI Bridge
- AGP v2.0 Compliant
- Supports Additional AGP4X/2X interface and Fast Write Transaction

High Throughput SiS MuTIOL connect to SiS961 MuTIOL Media I/O
- `Bi-directional` 16 bit data bus
- Perform 533MB/s bandwidth in 66MHz x 4 mode
- Distributed arbitration strategy with enhanced mode of contiguous DMA data streaming
- Packet based, pipelining, and split transaction scheme
Dedicated Isochronous Response Queue
- Serves Isochronous downstream transfers responsive to the memory read requests originated from USB or audio/modem controllers
- Offers privilege service to guarantee minimum latency & timely delivery

High Performance & High Quality 3D Accelerator
- `Built-in` a high performance `256-bit` 3D engine
- Supports `Ultra-AGPIITM` up to 2.7GB/s bandwidth
- `Built-in` a high quality 3D engine

High Performance 2D Accelerator
- `Built-in` 128 `double-words` hardware command queue
- `Built-in` Direct Draw Accelerator
- `Built-in` GDI+ Accelerator
- `Built-in` an 1T pipelined `128-bit` BITBLT graphics engine

Complete `TV-OUT`/Digital Flat Panel Solution

`MPEG-2`/1 Video Decoder
- `MPEG-2` ISO/IEC `13818-2` MP@HL and `MPEG-1` ISO/IEC `11172-2` standards compliant
- `Built-in` advanced hardware DVD acceleration logic
- Support AGP bus master/`LFB-mode` code fetching
- Half pixel resolution in motion compensation
- Support VCD, DVD and HDTV (all ATSC modes) decoding
- Direct DVD to TV playback

Video Accelerator
- Supports `YUV-to`-RGB color space conversion
- Supports `bi-linear` video interpolation with integer increments of 1/2048
- Supports graphics and video overlay function
- Supports tearing free double buffer flipping
- Supports RGB555, RGB565, YUV422, and YUV420 video playback format
- Supports filtered horizontal up and down scaling playback
- Supports DVD `sub-picture` playback overlay
- Supports DVD playback `auto-flipping`
- `Built-in` two 120x128 video playback line buffers to support 1920x1080 video playback
- `Built-in` independent Gamma correction RAM
- Supports DCI Drivers
- Supports Direct Draw Drivers

`702-Balls` BGA Package.
1.8V Core with Mixed 1.2V 1.5V 1.8V, 2.5V and 3.3V I/O CMOS Technology

<img src="http://www.sis.com/images/products/diagram/m650.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
 
How do you check what version of DX is running and supported?

I know it is:
Start
Run

but am lost as to what to type in the run box?

I am running XP.
 
You can only really tell what version of DX is _installed_, not what your card supports, in windows (that I know of)
For that you need to look at the manual or spec sheet.
For the M650, per above I went through SIS's site and found it supports DX7.

But the Radeon 7200 doesn't have `pixel-shader` support either; so maybe it's something else (as I know that's not required for POTC; Duke Surak'nar was running it with a GF2...). Maybe it's some weird thing like the M650 has issues with DX8 games even if they're not using DX8 features?

Oh, quick question. Do you have antialiasing turned off?
 
ran DX test on system and it okayed DX9.

test follows:

Page File: 243MB used, 814MB available
Windows Dir: C:WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (4.09.0000.0902)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.0001.0902 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: No problems found. DirectDraw test results: All tests were successful. Direct3D 7 test results: All tests were successful. Direct3D 8 test results: All tests were successful. Direct3D 9 test results: All tests were successful.
Sound Tab 1: DirectSound test results: All tests were successful.
Music Tab: DirectMusic test results: All tests were successful.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: SiS M650
Manufacturer: SiS
Chip type: SiS M650 Rev 00
DAC type: Internal
Device Key: EnumPCIVEN_1039&DEV_6325&SUBSYS_083C0E11&REV_00
Display Memory: 64.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Default Monitor
Monitor Max Res:
Driver Name: SiSGRV.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.2220 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 1/6/2004 22:32:18, 1081216 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: sisgrp.sys
Mini VDD Date: 1/6/2004 22:25:50, 432384 bytes
Device Identifier: {`D7B71ED9-2065`-`11CF-0D65`-3628A1C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1039
Device ID: 0x6325
SubSys ID: 0x083C0E11
Revision ID: 0x0000
Revision ID: 0x0000
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_D ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG1_A
Deinterlace Caps: n/a
Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled
DDraw Test Result: All tests were successful.
D3D7 Test Result: All tests were successful.
D3D8 Test Result: All tests were successful.
D3D9 Test Result: All tests were successful.
 
This may seem like a stupid question as NK has asked it above but you didn't answer. But have you disabled antialiasing as that can cause problems?
 
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