Need help running Jamestown on my laptop...

[jfe2]

I downloaded Jamestown from Steam today and the unfortunately crashes whenever I try to run it. It tells me I need a graphics card that supports shader 2.0, but as far as I know my laptop supports up to shader 4.0. I don't use my laptop for much gaming, mainly just games that don't have crazy requirements. I also don't really know a ton about graphics cards either. I have an integrated graphics card, which I'm pretty sure isn't great, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't run Jamestown...

The specs for it are as follows.

OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP with SP2 / Vista / 7
Processor: Intel® Pentium™ 4 2.4 GHz or better
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 250 MB
Video Card: Any OpenGL 2.0 graphics card with 256MB+ video RAM
DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c

My PC has...

Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset Family
DAC Type: Internal
Adapter String: Mobile Intel(R) GMA 4500M
Bios Information: Intel Video BIOS
Total Available Graphics Memory: 1759 MB
Dedicated Video Memory: 128 MB

I'm ignorant as far as this all goes, but if anyone could help to explain why it isn't working, I would really appreciate the favor.

[jeffro11]

Sadly the issue here is in fact your integrated video. These are not great at all. Its true this chip supports up to OpenGL 2.1, however the game may be using extensions your chip simply lacks. Long story short, I doubt it will ever work.

[jfe2]

Sadly the issue here is in fact your integrated video. These are not great at all. Its true this chip supports up to OpenGL 2.1, however the game may be using extensions your chip simply lacks. Long story short, I doubt it will ever work.

Damn, I figured so. Know if there's any easy way to get a new graphics card? IIRC its not easy with a laptop.

[jeffro11]

You will have to go out and buy a new one. Sorry

[jfe2]

You will have to go out and buy a new one. Sorry

No big deal. Thanks for answering me though!

[jeffro11]

As a rule of thumb with laptops. Avoid anything with the integrated Intel GMA or similar (or anything they produce in the future). Try to go for either ATI or Nvidia. Most lower end laptops with these chips are far superior to the Intel GMA's. You really cant go wrong with them. Only starting at the mid range things get a bit more confusing!

[isiolia]

Tried reinstalling/updating your driver? That's been a reported fix for this issue with other games.

I'd also look at messing with the chunk of RAM it borrows for the GPU - the GMA 4500 doesn't have dedicated memory, but it might be that your system uses at least 128MB - and the game requires 256MB. Makes me wonder if it's reporting less, and the game doesn't like that.

[jfe2]

Tried reinstalling/updating your driver? That's been a reported fix for this issue with other games.

I'd also look at messing with the chunk of RAM it borrows for the GPU - the GMA 4500 doesn't have dedicated memory, but it might be that your system uses at least 128MB - and the game requires 256MB. Makes me wonder if it's reporting less, and the game doesn't like that.

Oh my god you are AWESOME! I tried to update my driver before by having Windows do a search, but it came back with nothing. After downloading them from the Intel site, I can run the game now! Thank you so much!

[jeffro11]

Huzzah!