Strange video card problem

[curly]

My op system is Vista, my vid card is a Nvidia Ge Force 8400 GS. The system has 3.5 gb of memory.

I am trying to play FarCry, the first edition where Trees,grass,buildings and so on display correctly, however
roads and water display as a bland off white color.

The game comes with a video adjustment program, which is a bit complex for me to understand, though I
did try out some of the features. But nothing worked.

Any help appreciated.

[pctek]

The card is too lame to cope with Far Cry. You need a better card basically. You can alter settings within the game to make it look horrible so the card can cope with it without dropping to something hideous like 1 frame per second, but sadly, there are limits to that too and it's time to get a real gaming card.

[curly]

Hi pctek, thanks for reply. I'm only a part time gamer with Far Cry being basically the only games I have played.

However any advise re the replacement card I should be looking at ?

[tmrafi]

You can get a used NVidia 8800GT on Trademe for around $80. It will be more than sufficient for part time gamers.

[pctek]

Look at the requirements for the game you play - try and go a bit better. You don't have to have this years card if budget matters, last years card is fine, but you do need something on the recommended list of the game.

Look up specs on game, then go to Tomshardware and look at the VGA rankings.

[dugimodo]

It depends entirely on budget, http://www.pp.co.nz/products.php?pp_id=AA31856 for example would sort out your gaming needs for a while.

PC gaming is demanding, and lower end graphics cards run into performance issues faster. So trying to game on a cheap PC is never an Ideal situation and you can end up having to upgrade in order to play the latest games.

Farcry is pretty clever, it just scales back the details to suit your hardware fairly automatically. I remember after a graphics upgrade suddenly noticing there were bubbles and fish in the water that used to be plain blue.

[icow]

I've seen this glitch before, i get it when playing on my gma 950. Patch the game to 1.4, (this also makes it possible to finish the game imo). Far cry should run on anything that vaguely resembles a graphics card.

[curly]

I've seen this glitch before, i get it when playing on my gma 950. Patch the game to 1.4, (this also makes it possible to finish the game imo). Far cry should run on anything that vaguely resembles a graphics card.

Great, updating to version 1.4 did the trick. No need for a replacement video card - yet !

Thanks

[Agent_24]

Great, updating to version 1.4 did the trick. No need for a replacement video card - yet !

Thanks

Also you can get weird problems in games with out of date video card drivers too.