- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Okay... this is why I was wondering. The ATI Radeon 9000 is slightly not as fast as the Nvidia 5200. The XBox video card is a modified Nvidia GForce 4 440, but uses shared system memory instead of having it's own. I could barely run Halo in 640x480 with all details down. My computer meets and well exceeds the minimum system reqs. Doesn't make sense does it.
Well, it turns out that the halo pixel shader is the culpret. The ATI 9000 and the XBox card don't support the 2.0 or the 1.4 pixel shader, hence it ran with the 1.1. (I'd bet the Xbox card doesn't even support Pixel shading, but rather uses vertex shading.) When I forced Halo to use the 1.1 pixel shader, it ran most rightously; in hi-res I might add. (If you're wondering, I did this by using the -use11 command line option.)
I realize laptops suck. I would sell it and buy a cheap laptop and a good PC if I could. Anybody want a Dell Inspiron 5150? Cheers.
EDIT: I just checked it out. The XBox does use a pixel shader. My video card actually does suck. Dang. (At least with Halo. It runs UT2003 just fine.)
[Edited on 10/3/2004 7:50:40 PM]