Halo 1 & 2 for PC
This topic has moved here: Subject: specular and shadows greyed out
  • Subject: specular and shadows greyed out
Subject: specular and shadows greyed out
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I just installed a new video card to play halo; a pny geforce mx4000 64mb ram. Halo runs but the shadows and specular are turned off and greyed out. Is it the video card? I found the article http://support.microsoft.com/?id=829478 on microsofts' site saying it could be my computer is in safe mode(its not) or too slow, its a p4 1.7ghz, 640mb RAM, with the above video card. Just wondering if I should take the card back and get a better one.

Also is there a search function in these forums? I was searching the posts to see if this was already posted and got scanning through all the posts.

  • 12.09.2004 8:55 AM PDT
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Heyyo,

It's your videocard. It's forced function, or more accurately, doesn't do pixel shading, only transform & lighting (T&L). I know a ATI Radeon 9100 and the NV GF FX5200 have basic pixel shaders, but those cards ain't too great. I suggest a minimum of ATI Radeon 9600 (normal or PRO) or NV GF FX5700, cause those cards dish out some good preformance.

Your system seems good enough, just make sure its got an AGP x8 slot and you should be able to get a nice videocard. ;)

Shadows actually shouldn't be greyed out since that's just T&L, but gearbox I guess diddn't wanna bother putting it into FF mode cause I guess they figured the systems couldn't handle it...

If you wanna leave specular lighting and shadows on during gameplay you'll need to pickup either a ATI Radeon 9800 PRO or a NV GF 6600 so that the framerate doesn't die. If gearbox built the game with proper optimizations n' stuff we wouldn't have such bad probs like this... and there wouldn't have been such a need for HaloCE... let's hope whoever does Halo2PC learns from the errors that were in Halo1PC...

[Edited on 12/9/2004 9:52:06 AM]

  • 12.09.2004 9:48 AM PDT
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Thanks for your help the_mard. I'm gonna check out those cards.

  • 12.09.2004 10:05 AM PDT

The shadows use programmable pixel and vertex shaders, I believe. Which old cards can't do.

  • 12.09.2004 10:11 AM PDT
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Hey, the MarD, if I have a compaq presario, running on celeron, with 256MB RAM, will i be able to use a ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card???

How much is the card in USD???

  • 12.09.2004 4:40 PM PDT