Gears of War on PC

Potential-Monke

Question for those who have this, or just know everything about PC gaming in general.

Have an XPS M1710 with a NVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX, and all the other necessary bits for this game to work (Dual Core 2.16ghz processor, 1gb ram, etc).

Now, i installed the game (taking longer than it does for Stephen Hawking to walk), and when i started it, it got this message saying that if i didn't download a certain driver for my graphics card (168.3 or something like that), that the game would stop and i'd lose eveything. So, i went to NVidia to get same, and through manual and automatic search, i was told i have all the latest drivers for this card.

So, i ignored the message (god bless skip) and started the game, which allowed me to look at the fancy menu screens, followed by what i can gather was the sound and music for the intro, with 2 frozen screenshots of a grill and a monster looking dog thing, and then i got 3 of those "xxx has encountred a problem" pop-ups before the game giving up the goose.

So, is my laptop actually not worth a ****, is the graphics card not as good as i thought, or is the game wankered?

Also to note, i never had to put in the product key...

L31mr0d

Uninstall your current nVidia drivers

Download these drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

Download the GoW update:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_22190.shtml

Install these then try to start the game making sure to log into your windows live account

Try and play it

Stephen

You really could do with some more RAM. Its really cheap at the moment.

Potential-Monke

L31mr0d wrote:

Uninstall your current nVidia drivers

Download these drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

Download the GoW update:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_22190.shtml

Install these then try to start the game making sure to log into your windows live account

Try and play it

I'll get onto that there in a while! Cheers!

Stephen wrote:

You really could do with some more RAM. Its really cheap at the moment.

I've been contemplating that, i actually thought i had 2gb! Just need someone competant to put it in for me, knowing me i'd manage to blow this thing up!

AlmightyCushion

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I've been contemplating that, i actually thought i had 2gb! Just need someone competant to put it in for me, knowing me i'd manage to blow this thing up!

It's a piece of piss. Ram is dirt cheap, 2GBs will cost you about €60, 4GBs will cost you around €100. At those prices you'd be daft not to get some more ram.

Let me know how you get on with L31mr0d's suggestion, I haven't been able to play this for the same reason as you so hopefully this works.

Potential-Monke

Will do, might get some Ram this weekend! 4gb sounds good, but probably unnecessary! Ah i'm not known for making good judgement calls anyway! I'll let you know about that, gimme a while cuz there's something i need to do first!

Potential-Monke

Ok, i uninstalled the driver (i think), and it reset my settings back to 600x800, and when i went to install the downloaded file, it said that it couldn't find any compatible drivers for my hardware (or something simular), so i restored the computer to get the normal drivers back, and i'm after downloading and installing the patch, i'll let ye know how i get on...

Edit: Ok, i don't think the game works now... My activity light gives a little wink every second or so, but i'm waiting a while for the game to start...

Edit a deux: Right, stupid thing just froze my laptop... Uninstalling that!!!

Cunny-Funt

I know what your problem is!!!






But you'll have to pay me.

















Nawwwwww I kid I kid. Its because your on a laptop. Yo7u can't download and install typical nivdia drivers as they are only for DESKTOP graphics cards.

There is a way around this though, here's a site that gives you the drivers, plus a tweaked .ini file that you must slap into the driver folder before you install it.

Make sure to remove your old ones 1st, and restart. Then install these.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/

good luck m8 :cool:

christophicus

Yeah Apparently that game is supposed to run really bad ( if at all ) on PC's for some reason . I have had no problem playing the game on my PC though. I have an e6400 and an X1800gto so your hardware is grand my friend, its just supposed to be a very poorly ported over game or something.

0ubliette

christophicus wrote: »

its just supposed to be a very poorly ported over game or something.

Surprising really, given epics PC history. I was thinking about getting GOW on pc and all just for the extra content, maybe ill just stick with ye olde faithful xbox version!!

yoyo

0ubliette wrote: »

Surprising really, given epics PC history. I was thinking about getting GOW on pc and all just for the extra content, maybe ill just stick with ye olde faithful xbox version!!

But Epic didn't port it unfortunately, people can fly did, and made a right balls of it! The bonus content isnt much either...

Nick

bennyc

What OS are you using I have pretty much the same spec laptop as you with 2GIG RAM but when using Vista Gaming was a joke I have since installed one of those custom XP Vista Lookalike and gaming is a dream.
Example GRAW2 sh1t itself on Vista installed yesterday and all settings are on high no probs.

I had a lot of trouble getting the laptop drivers to install over visat but no problem on XP.

yoyo

bennyc wrote: »

What OS are you using I have pretty much the same spec laptop as you with 2GIG RAM but when using Vista Gaming was a joke I have since installed one of those custom XP Vista Lookalike and gaming is a dream.
Example GRAW2 sh1t itself on Vista installed yesterday and all settings are on high no probs.

I had a lot of trouble getting the laptop drivers to install over visat but no problem on XP.

I have Vista but its not the issiue, main issiue with this game is stuttering, so it will go fine for most of it and then stutter a bit for 2 seconds then get back to normal, then again xbox version does have simular issiues, maybe I'm being picky , But nah it deffo happens on pc version more..

Nick

BULLER

bennyc wrote: »

What OS are you using I have pretty much the same spec laptop as you with 2GIG RAM but when using Vista Gaming was a joke I have since installed one of those custom XP Vista Lookalike and gaming is a dream.
Example GRAW2 sh1t itself on Vista installed yesterday and all settings are on high no probs.

I had a lot of trouble getting the laptop drivers to install over visat but no problem on XP.

Did you try it on vista with all the effects and "aero" turned off? The performance difference couldn't have been THAT big between Xp and Vista...

bennyc

most games I tried on vista were improved with XP.
Madden08 FIFA08 GRAW2 Battlestations Midway are the best examples I will try World in conflict and Crysis next and see how I get on, generally I find that the EA games would perform with any hardware so not good examples I know. Havent tried gears yet but will give it a go. Madden would hang during kick off if that makes sence to anyone as the camera angle in a single motion turnes 180degrees to the player cam catching from teh kick it look good but died a death I rebuilt the machine without the bloatware first and had the same results installed XP and no issues. I have installed some of the same games on a Vista desktop and had no issues from my experience. I know from the games listed above GRAW2 is the only hard hitting GPU game but I expect the same results from WIC and Crysis if I can install them on XP.

Genghiz Cohen

christophicus wrote: »

Yeah Apparently that game is supposed to run really bad ( if at all ) on PC's for some reason . I have had no problem playing the game on my PC though. I have an e6400 and an X1800gto so your hardware is grand my friend, its just supposed to be a very poorly ported over game or something.

Looked and ran great on my PC:
(2.4 Duo, 2 GB DDR2 Ram, Nvidia 7900GS)

Didn't have one problem with the game itself, only getting a windows live account took about an hour...

Potential-Monke

I have XP, had a whole lot of trouble with Vista when i got this first. Oblivion was like playing a really slow stop motion game... Threatened court on Dell and got a shiney new laptop, the exact same but with Xp, sent to me once i sent my own back. God bless consumer law!!!

I'm going to try what Cunny_Funt says there above. Just a quick (n00b) quesiton though: do i delete the drivers for the NVidia card through Add/Delete Programs in the control panel, or right click and delete the driver through the device manager?

Cheers peeps!

Edit: Another question, just relating to that site with the drivers, ah, which one do i want? (I know, such a n00b).

yoyo

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I have XP, had a whole lot of trouble with Vista when i got this first. Oblivion was like playing a really slow stop motion game... Threatened court on Dell and got a shiney new laptop, the exact same but with Xp, sent to me once i sent my own back. God bless consumer law!!!

I'm going to try what Cunny_Funt says there above. Just a quick (n00b) quesiton though: do i delete the drivers for the NVidia card through Add/Delete Programs in the control panel, or right click and delete the driver through the device manager?

Cheers peeps!

You can do either, Both should launch the official uninstall routine,

Nick

Potential-Monke

yoyo wrote: »

You can do either, Both should launch the official uninstall routine,

Nick

Cool banans, cheers! I'm downloading something now, so hopefully... *fingers crossed*

Potential-Monke

Right, here we go...

Went to add/remove programs, and click uninstall on the NVidia driver, and it disappeared. Then i went to uninstall it from the device manager screen and it said it couldn't as it was needed to start windows...

So, i reset the laptop (took considerably longer to boot, at the black screen before login for about 2 minutes), and installed the driver, all grand, and loaded GoW, and it started up fine, got a bit of a glitchy intro but it was watchable. When i play the game it's very very jumpy, and if anything happens, ie: a helicoptor flies over, it freezes for about 2 seconds. This is a regular occurence. I stopped playing after 5 minutes, as it;s not possible to play.

Now, i noticed that everything seems to be running a bit slower, i have the NVidia Settings icon on the bottom right of my screen (which i previously didn't have), and in the task manager at the performance tab, the PF usage used to be 312mb, and now it's 415mb (i'm not sure if thats relevant).

I think i'm going to uninstall this bloody game and do a system restore.

yoyo

A gig of RAM is quite low, I'd say it could be causing the stuttering... If it dissapeared like that probably driver was already removed, as I say though even on my rig see sig it stutters a bit, not as bad maybe but I think more memory would help in your situation!

Nick

Potential-Monke

Ah i'll get some more RAM this weekend maybe and stick it in and try it all again... Cheers for the info!

0ubliette

Just installed this on my PC yesterday. **** me, that was the longest install ive ever seen!! Takes the complete piss tbh. Still, i was expecting the game to run like dog**** based on what people said here, but not a hitch so far, it runs perfectly, looks better than the 360 version (shadows are better IMO), and the framerate is blistering. Tho thats actually a bit of a problem, the framerate i get on it is so high that the camera moves around so fast it gave me a headache...i actually had to put on vsync to try and lower the FPS :eek:
But yeah so far im impressed with the port (install times aside) also, its nice unlocking the acheivements all over again!

L31mr0d

0ubliette wrote: »

But yeah so far im impressed with the port (install times aside) also, its nice unlocking the acheivements all over again!

wait until you get to the bonus chapter thats only in the pc version, it's my favourite personally. I'd be pissed if i'd bought the "Xbox exclusive" version only to find, not only was it not exclusive to the Xbox but also being released on the PC with a whole extra chapter.

Also, in the pc version you are given the option to give your team orders, but don't even bother mapping the keys for this as it is unnecessary and actually quite frustrating, as I thought I could do what I did in GRAW and jericho and just send some of my team members out into the open to draw the fire of snipers so I could get a shot off. But they've actually made your team reply "negative!" when you give them an order to move into the line of fire. Crap imo, if I can't order them to their death I don't even want the option of ordering them

0ubliette

yeah, lookin forward to the bonus chapter myself, gears was definitely one of my favourite games of last year, so im hopin its good

Sephiroth_dude

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Have an XPS M1710 with a NVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX, and all the other necessary bits for this game to work (Dual Core 2.16ghz processor, 1gb ram, etc).

I have the excact same spec and laptop as you,(well except for my processor,its a core 2 duo @2.16 but watever)and I could'nt get timeshift to run,was telling me I needed to download driver,so I mite try the website mentioned earlier and see if that gets it working


ps
I could do with another gig of ram myself,only have one :-/.

Genghiz Cohen

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I could'nt get timeshift to run,

I'm happy for you, teh sux TBH L4wL.

On-topic: Brumaks are class! Were they in the xbox version?

vestanpance

L31mr0d wrote: »

Uninstall your current nVidia drivers

Download these drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

Download the GoW update:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_22190.shtml

Install these then try to start the game making sure to log into your windows live account

Try and play it

I have this game a while but only got around to installing it last night, I tried the updater in the game and also the GoW patch above, both of them shut the game down and open up my bios updater programe (asus updater). Is it wise to do this update (know feck all about this and don't want to go upsetting things as everything else works fine) or should I just uninstall the updater, if I do will the patch then run ok?

Any help would be appreciated.

Azza

Yeah I bought this pretty soon after its release on PC.

My housemate has it as well.

First of all I have played it through twice in co-op on hardcore with my housemate and thought it was very good. Gameplay is simply but addictive. I really like the cover system and co-op just makes any single player game so much better. Deathmatch gameplay is also good fun. It won't win any oscars for story but was enough to drive the game foward.

The additional content is okay but was abit too easy.

Its got its fair share of techincal issues.

This is my experience with it. Its probably the slowest game to install ever in my experience...its beyond funny. At least 45 minutes on a 18 speed dvd drive. Secondly the automated patching system was broken at release . So you needed to manually get patch 1 before auto patching worked. Thirdly it was a complete dog on my old graphics card (Saphhire x1900xtx) and I had to turn everything to low at 1280x768 to get a game without stutter. My housemate who had an 8800GTS 320MB card was able to play it on medium but half way through he turned it down as it become very stuttery for him. The game crashed any time we tried to play the first level without doing the training option. During our first playthrough some cut scenes did not play for us as well. Also half way through our first play through the in game voice coms stopped working requiring us to use a third party program. After our second play though the game stopped working on my housemates computer and crashed everytime he got to the main menu he then re-installed only for it to make no difference. He still has not got it working since,

I then tried to play online with a friend on insane only to find my save file had vanished (a well known issue). So he had to send me his save file.

I then learned the game does not properly support widescreen (its vert minus)

After this I upgraded my gpu to a gainward 4870. I could then go to 1920x1200 DX10 and everything maxed and so far the frame rate seems just fine. I reckon the frame rate remains at 30+ at this settings. Game looks very nice. But this introduced another bug. The in game V-sync option does not work so you have to force it in your gpu control panel. The problem is you still get woeful screen tearing if you frame rate don't match your monitor refresh rate.

Its really quite noticeable this screen tearing and make my eyes water. So now I think i will be forced to turn down the graphics to eliminate it. Otherwise it will drive me nuts.

Finally online play is pretty dead. Hardly any games online probably due to the fact that most people thought they had to pay to play it online with the games for windows live service something which is not true. You did have to pay if you wanted ranked games and match making services but otherwise it was free but all features are free now.

Overall I thought it was a blast even with all the problems I had.

vestanpance

Cheers Azza, I'll try to get the first patch later to see if that helps.