Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Technical Problems Computer lockup with graphics?

I've installed the game on two machines. My desktop works fine. Alex's laptop on the other hand is lucky to get past the character creation screen. The character creation screen has a habit of flashing once every time the character model is changed. After a random number of changes, the computer freezes. No keyboard commands work (inc. Ctrl+Alt+Del) and the mouse cursor is frozen. The sound and music still play.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A30. DxDiag.txt is here.

Can anyone help with this please?

I've read more posts concerning laptops... It seems they just don't like Beyond Divinity. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shame.gif" alt="" />

Forgot to mention: latest drivers and Windows updates are installed.

Bump?

"ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 IGP"

Here's a tip from someone who makes computers his life. MOBILITY chipsets are horrible for gaming. Almost any prefab laptop in existance that says it has what's needed for gaming is a lie, as they almost always use these onboard chipsets that are worse than the built-in video of desktop boards. Unless you can customize a laptop and swap out the onboard vid, you'll be hosed every time.

How hard is it to add another video card to a laptop and use that instead? I'm experienced with hardware and driver installation.

Portable hardware is expensive and no laptop in public circulation has the option to swap out the onboard components such as video. It's unfortunate but true.

Maybe laptop video cards aren't the best, but his video meets the minimum requirements, and should run the game. I assume you're running the latest Radeon driver set from www.ati.com? If not, get it. Catalyst 4.4 is the latest I believe.

ATi don't support their Mobility series of cards personally. They say that you need to contact the laptop manufacturer. I tried downloading drivers from ATi, but they wouldn't recognise the hardware. We checked Toshiba and they had no updates available for the machine. It's a fairly new model so it's not entirely surprising. I might contact them personally and see if I can egg them along.

Thank you for your assistance!

In order to install the ultimate drivers from ATI, that is Catalyst 4.4, you have to run the exe file first and it should create an ATI directory. After that the installation begins and you get an error message but everything is not lost. You just have to manually install the driver that is go the video properties, select your card, click on change the pilot and say that you want to look for a driver in a specified folder. In my case, the folder is

C:\ATI\SUPPORT\wxp-w2k-8-00-040322a-014266c\2KXP_inf

depending on the OS you have you then have to select the proper inf file. Only by doing this your video card driver will be updated.

If you need further explanation, you can visit this site :

http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

It will tell you about a little program which mods(or patches) catalyst in order to install it on your laptop.

And one thing, installing the last Catalyst didn't help me with the slowdowns problems. I've mailed Larian for that and Lynn answered that a programmer would help me soon. Have you ever seen developers who listen so much to the players? I hope my problem will be solved and that it will help others too. When I get an answer, I'll post it if you want.

Please do! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

No problem, I will post it when I recaeive it. I really hope someone will be able to find a solution. I'm at the beginning of act 2 (just outside of the citadel) and I can tell you this was very hard sometimes to play. This shows how great I think this game is and how much I want to play but for now I don't play it anymore, I'm waiting for a solution.

I may have found the problem or at least one source of problems in my case. I have part of my RAM which runs at 133MHz and part of it which should run at 266MHz. The 133MHz RAM is what I got with the laptop and the 266MHz RAM is what I bought after. I should have paid attention, I know <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" /> .....
Maybe some RAM problems could explain the locukps for other players?
I'll buy much more RAM but this time all of it running at the same frequency.

The faster RAM should just clock itself down to the slower speed. I'm not sure about compatibility, but if there was a problem with this, I'd think the extra RAM would have caused an error during the quick memory test when you turn the laptop on, or would not have been recognized at all.
Also, are those both the actual clock speeds? Some RAM lists an effective clock speed; ie DDR RAM running at 133MHz has an effective speed of 266MHz, since it can transfer 2 bits of data per clock cycle.

There are a couple memory testing programs you can try;

Memtest86

MS Windows Memory Diagnostic

Hello,

I'm sure that my ancient RAM wa srunning at 133 MHz. I have loaded Beyond Divinity with it and it was very slow. I have changed the RAM with the one running at 266MHz and I can tell you that it was really faster. I haven't tried with more RAM at 266MHz yet but I've ordered 512 MB of PC2100 RAM (266MHz). With that, my laptop will have a nice little boost I think and I'll finally be able to kick some demons buts!!!

Download and install the alternative ATi drivers from http://www.omegacorner.com

Thank you very much! Will try...

sounds like VPU problem!!!

try to change to 4X if 8X..if your card has VPU recovery on..try to turn it of via adapter properties window..

turn of the Fastwrite option (it wont effect your performance)

(those are some manuel settings which the omega drivers use too)

Working now! Thank you for the drivers! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />