1. #1

    Display messed up (64MB/128MB hypermemory) [SOLVED]

    When I try to run Trials 2 or Trials 2 SE, the display is all wonky (technical term . I can make out the shapes, but there's a bunch of flicker and stuff looks transparent.

    Dell Inspiron 6400, Intel T2600 dual core @ 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, with ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 and DirectX 9c with the latest drivers and 128MB Video RAM.

    This should meet the minimum requirements. I've tried windowed and full screen at 1024x768 and 800x600, but it still doesn't work properly.
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  2. #2
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    You hardware configuration seems fine. Have you tried both normal graphics quality and ultra high? Is the same problem visible in both modes?

    I would recommend checking two things:

    1. Open up your display settings at Windows control panel. Check that your desktop color depth is 32 bit true color.

    2. Open up the ATI Catalyst Control Center and check that you have antialiasing disabled. Antialiasing takes a lot of display memory, and with only 128 megabytes available in your integrated Mobility Radeon could cause problems with Trials 2 (and other games using large amount of textures).

    3. Open up your bios screen when your computer starts up. There is a setting for changing the memory allocated for the integrated Mobility Radeon graphics chip. If less than 128 megabytes has been allocated for the integrated graphics chip, the game cannot run properly. Select either 128 megabytes or 256 megabytes.
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  3. #3
    Originally Posted by sebbbi
    You hardware configuration seems fine. Have you tried both normal graphics quality and ultra high? Is the same problem visible in both modes?
    Yes.

    Originally Posted by sebbbi
    1. Open up your display settings at Windows control panel. Check that your desktop color depth is 32 bit true color.
    Confirmed, it's at 32 bit.

    Originally Posted by sebbbi
    2. Open up the ATI Catalyst Control Center and check that you have antialiasing disabled. Antialiasing takes a lot of display memory, and with only 128 megabytes available in your integrated Mobility Radeon could cause problems with Trials 2 (and other games using large amount of textures).
    It's set to "Let the application decide".

    Originally Posted by sebbbi
    3. Open up your bios screen when your computer starts up. There is a setting for changing the memory allocated for the integrated Mobility Radeon graphics chip. If less than 128 megabytes has been allocated for the integrated graphics chip, the game cannot run properly. Select either 128 megabytes or 256 megabytes.
    I'll check that now.
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  4. #4

    This could be my problem

    Checked in the BIOS, and it claims only 64MB of video memory. I couldn't see any way to change it in the BIOS, so I guess that's my problem. Don't know why Catalyst was reporting 128MB. Guess I'll have to do some more investigation on this side.
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  5. #5
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    X1300 is a very low end graphics solution (slower than the 5 year old low end 9600 Radeons). It's likely that it can't access above 64 megabytes of memory.

    One of our customers has exactly the same laptop as you have (Dell Inspiron 6400), but the graphics chip is one model better X1400 with the needed 128 megabytes of memory. The game runs fine on his computer.

    His computer specs are:
    Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop
    Vista Home Premium 32-bit
    ATI mobility radeon x1400 256mb hypermemory (128mb shared)
    Intel Core 2 CPU T7200 2.00Ghz
    2GB RAM
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  6. #6
    A little more research tells me a couple of things:

    [list:3ijw619n]* The reason I get different results is like the above computer: part of the memory is shared. So there's 64MB of physical memory on the card, plus 64MB is shares from system memory.
    * More mystery: most of the stuff I find says the X1300 should share its way up to 256MB, not 128. And, in theory, that memory should appear seamlessly to the application, so it should work fine.[/list:u:3ijw619n]

    More research needed, I guess.
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  7. #7
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    Originally Posted by bdoserror
    A little more research tells me a couple of things:

    [list:3s1nwq13]* The reason I get different results is like the above computer: part of the memory is shared. So there's 64MB of physical memory on the card, plus 64MB is shares from system memory.
    * More mystery: most of the stuff I find says the X1300 should share its way up to 256MB, not 128. And, in theory, that memory should appear seamlessly to the application, so it should work fine.[/list:u:3s1nwq13]

    More research needed, I guess.
    If I undestand correctly Hypermemory can only share managed texture resources. Resources that are directly loaded to graphics card memory (vertex buffers, index buffers, z-buffer, rendertargets: frontbuffer, backbuffer, g-buffers, shadowmap buffers, etc) cannot be accessed from main memory as those have to be in specific hardware optimized format.

    You could try to update your bios. It could be that the new version allows you to allocate more memory to your graphics chip.
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  8. #8
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    Added 128MB Hypermemory/Turbocache warning to the game minimum specifications. These cards/chips only have 64MB of real onboard graphics memory, and this is not enough to run Trials 2 Second Edition.

    Minimum specifications can be seen here:
    http://www.redlynxtrials.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27
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