[mark2512]

Hey,
I'm thinking about purchasing Fallout 3, however looking at the specs it looks like my graphics card is 128mb short of the 256mb required for the minimum specs. I have a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 PCI Express 128MB VRAM. All my other specs meet the recommended specifications.

What I want to know is if I can play the game at all? Will the game simply not allow me to install it, or will it crash on opening the game? Or will it allow me to play it, but I'll probably have to play on the lowest settings. I'm not too bothered about graphics to be honest so as long as i can play it with a relatively acceptable frame rate I'm happy. Ive been doing some research and read that minimum and recommended specs tend to be an average of what the game needs, whereas some times it needs less and other times it needs more.

Also if its impossible for me to play it are external graphics cards any good? Since I use a laptop I cant simply upgrade.

Cheers
Mark

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You should be able to install it. However, it will be a gamble on whether or not the game will be stable. As for external video cards, sorry but I think you are out of luck on that one.

[Granz00]

You should be able to install it. However, it will be a gamble on whether or not the game will be stable. As for external video cards, sorry but I think you are out of luck on that one.

[mark2512]

Thanks for reply.

My friend professed some minor interest in buying the game so I'll see if i can pursuade him too and then see if it runs on my system.

Thanks

[wizzy2k5]

Hey,
I'm thinking about purchasing Fallout 3, however looking at the specs it looks like my graphics card is 128mb short of the 256mb required for the minimum specs. I have a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 PCI Express 128MB VRAM. All my other specs meet the recommended specifications.

What I want to know is if I can play the game at all?

Hello mark2512

You should be able to install the game no problem as Granz00 mentioned, however it will not run as reccomended. If you can I would reccomend buying a cheap graphics card as you can pick them up cheap. I have seen a 1gb card and it was a 9600 for about £60 so you should be able to find one easy enough.

It may/may not play the game. If it does don't be surprised if it jerks alot when playing as you are below the reccomended specs.

Regards

[mark2512]

Hi
Thanks for the reply.

You should be able to install the game no problem as Granz00 mentioned, however it will not run as reccomended. If you can I would reccomend buying a cheap graphics card as you can pick them up cheap. I have seen a 1gb card and it was a 9600 for about £60 so you should be able to find one easy enough.

I assume you mean for a desktop computer, however I'm using a laptop (an Acer Aspire 5684WLMi to be precise). Are you able to upgrade these? I've heard some laptops can be upgraded but not most since the graphics card is integrated into the motherboard or something like that. Thats why i was wondering if external graphic cards are any good, however the reading I've been doing suggests they're not really for gaming.

I'll be happy if it just lets me play it I'm quite tolerant of jerky graphics, although I do have my limits...

Cheers

Mark

EDIT: I also just found this interesting piece of information regarding my laptop:

roadboy: the nVidia GeForce Go 7600, is it dedicated graphics or is it integrated because it is turbocache, even tho it says it takes up 1 PCI-E slot? does that mean it can be changed when u want to upgrade at a later date?

Easycom: Turbocache is a mixture of dedicated and shared memory. This particular model has a GeForce go 7600 graphics chip with 128MB dedicated vram, and 128MB of shared system memory on top of that. As laptops dont use a physical PCI-E slot due to space, the graphics cannot be upgraded at a later date.

25-Mar-2007 gc: Is it possible to upgrade the video memory in the Aspire 5684 to 256Mb and if so, how?

Easycom: Sorry, video memory is non-upgradeable although there is 128MB of shared system memory alongside the 128MB of dedicated (a value that you can manually change between 0 and 128 in the BIOS). This combination is known as Turbocache (nvidia) or Hypermemory (ATI) and brings the total up to 256MB.

So does this mean I do actually have 256MB of potential VRAM?

Edited by mark2512, 01 November 2008 - 03:24 AM.

[wizzy2k5]

I assume you mean for a desktop computer

That is correct, since you have a laptop, all graphics are integrated into the motherboard so if you want better graphics you will need a new motherboard. What you can do is change the size of the graphics in the bios but please note this will take some off your ram. So lets say you have 1gb in total (1024mb) and you use 256mb for your graphics, you will have 768mb of ram available.

Off the top of my head I am unsure where to go, but as a rough idea if you look for something along the lines of onboard devices or something similar, go into that and you should see your graphics options.

Regards

Edited by wizzy2k5, 01 November 2008 - 02:40 PM.

[mark2512]

Hi,
Thanks again. I have 2GB of RAM and the minimum requirement for XP is 1GB so i have a little to share.

Thanks a lot.

Mark

[snoopen]

Hi Mark,

I also have a similar laptop to you, the Aspire 5652wlmi or some such, with a nVidia 7600 Go 128mb ram. If you check out the site below it has information on what laptops might have MXM slots, which kind of make GFX cards upgradeable. If you're experienced with laptop hardware upgrades you should be able to replace your card if it is sitting in an MXM slot. However I just craked my laptop open and was unable to locate any such slot. Read all the warnings carefully before attempting anything like this though.

I've read in other posts that the game seems to work find on Medium gfx settings, so you may as well give the game a try before anything else.

Regards,
Scott

http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

Edited by snoopen, 13 November 2008 - 06:16 AM.

[mark2512]

Hey,
I brought and installed the game and it works perfectly on the lowest graphics, although I havent bothered to try increasing them yet. So I'm assuming I can get 256MB of VRAM out of it which is certainly reassuring.

Cheers
Mark