Star Wars: The Old Republic [KOTOR MMO]

You have integrated graphics, not an actual graphic card. Integrated cards are not built to handle games, at all.

So what does that mean exactly? mmm

It means that your graphics chip is part of the motherboard and isn't actually a separate card. Integrated graphics chips basically are the bare minimum and really cannot handle much of anything.

Yeah, it isn't pretty crappy, but I just don't have the cash to buy anything good. I can still play Skyrim on low settings no prob, and TOR runs smooth on low settings too. Its just these crashes. Is my laptop just too shit to handle it anyway though?

Again, I'm bad at the technical details of this. I just install games and play them.

Skyrim is surprisingly low-spec; I was running it on medium on my laptop, which could just handle TOR on low.

Your laptop's probably just not good enough to run it. Laptops really aren't great for gaming unless you shell out a ton of money.

Did you have anything else at all running in the background when it was giving out on you when you were trying to play, btw? All drivers up to date?

Nothing else running and I've checked and it seems all my drivers are up to date. Its just frustrating that after months of play I suddenly can't play for an unknown reason. Is it even possible that a patch pushed it over my capabilities? I know one of them improved character models, but still.

Urgh. grumpy

Quite possibly. Most games like that will have some sort of "future updates may change technical specs" disclaimer in case something like that happens.

Well then lots of swear words.

I guess I can play for 30 mins at a time. And then shut off and restart. That won't get frustrating at all.

Yeah, Intel HD graphics just aren't for gaming in general, plus, upgrading a laptop really isn't cost-effective (assuming it's even possible, which it usually isn't. Not practically.).

I have a low spec Nvidia card and im still upgrading to a desktop.

Yes, sometimes when a card is unsupported it does indeed mean it may work now but not in future. When they make tweaks for all sorts of reasons, like optimisation, they will only make sure they work on supported hardware.

Do you know how much video memory the card has?

1760 MB for the Intel HD Core i3. 6 GB total memory.

Hmm, can't quite make sense of that. Nearly 2 gigs of graphics card memory is substantial- especially for an in-built- which would make me think that was actually system memory but then you say 6 gigs in total.

Do integrated graphics really have their own memory? I always thought they just use the system memory.

Traditionally, integrated chips simply sapped your computer's memory.

The newer models have their own dedicated memory, though. I've never heard of an integrated chip having 2gb of ram, though. That's really high-end, even for a dedicated gpu.

Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
Traditionally, integrated chips simply sapped your computer's memory.

The newer models have their own dedicated memory, though. I've never heard of an integrated chip having 2gb of ram, though. That's really high-end, even for a dedicated gpu.

Never heard of such a thing either.

Bare in mind I might be wrong.

I'm trying to compare it to what TOR devs say about what does and does not work well. Do you know the model number of the card?

For that matter, what's the laptop model?

Acer Aspire 5733. Core i3-370M

http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/notebook/2011/Acer/Aspire/Aspire5733/Aspire5733sp2.shtml

Says this about the graphics card:

"Intel® HD Graphics with 128 MB of dedicated system memory, supporting Microsoft® DirectX® 10"

Yeah...you've got nothing, really.