Has anyone tried playing S2TW using sandy bridge IGP? Please post with your experience if you have.
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Has anyone tried playing S2TW using sandy bridge IGP? Please post with your experience if you have.
I shall let you know in the next day or two. I saw it's now down to $30 at Bestbuy so I picked it up on impulse. I got the demo to run on my old Dell XPS w/ Nvidia 8600GT Mobile, before it bit the dust. From my testing the HD 3000 seems roughly equivalent with a slight edge for newer technology.
Right now I'm making more room on my Windows partition on my Macbook Pro 13" (Intel GPU), so I think it will be a good test. I believe I should be able to get it running on low settings.
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Update (7 hours later): That was fun. I had to kill my Windows install and reload. Since upgrading to Lion there doesn't seem to be an easy way to adjust the partition size any longer. I just now got S2TW to install after about an hour. Now it is "patching", ETA 1h55m. Are you serious? It's going to take longer to patch than to install! I'm on a 3Mbit connection by the way...
I'm going to bed, so much for playing tonight. I'll post an update in the next day or so.
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Verdict: (The next morning) Yes it runs. It asked me what version of DirectX. I chose the default, which was Dx11. Surprisingly it had auto set most of the video settings to high. I wasn't about to try that on a laptop with an IGP. I backed most of them down to low and left a few, like sky and unit details on medium. I started one of the historical battles and it ran smooth enough. The fans were moving like a banshee though. I know already it wasn't a high framerate. But it wasn't choppy either. I think it helps though that I have an i5, color me impressed with Intel on Sandy Bridge.
Annoyance; what the heck is the weird "smoky lens" effect (for lack of a better term)?
My final judgment; If you make video concessions it's good enough for SP, for running MP games I have my doubts.
As for my review of the actual game and what I think? That's another matter entirely.
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Addendum: I finally got a chance to toy with it a little bit in the campaign this evening. After about twenty minutes on the campaign map I checked temps. I actually hit 100C (210F, boiling point). I believe the specs on this mobile chipset are 105C. This is just too razor thin I don't feel comfortable running this game for any extended period. I'm not Captain Kirk and my laptop doesn't have a little Scotty running around inside...looks like I shelf S2TW until next year when I get a better spec machine with a better graphics card.
Summary: Yes it will run the game, no I don't think it's smart to do so.
anandtech reckoned that ETW played brilliantly on sandybridge mobile, so hopefully STW2 won't be too much different.
What I have posted above was experienced on Sandy Bridge mobile. I was impressed by how well it ran, but I have great concerns about heat.
Sent from remote...
Well, I decided I was too hasty in uninstalling Shogun 2, I should have tested with all settings on low. I remembered last night in bed that I still had a few settings on medium. I'm now re-installing the game. I'm not impressed with Steam, somehow it locked my account...maybe because I'm re-installing it so soon again? I'm thinking this is my last Steam game I'll buy...
Anyway, I'll update this thread when I find out if I can get the temps down any.
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Update: I got it installed a couple night ago, but I can't get it running correctly again. Screen artifacts, missing mouse pointer. I think it's residual settings or something from the previous install. I don't believe it uninstalled cleanly. After the trouble Steam gave me (for installing on a "new" computer) I don't feel like putting any more time into this. It left a bad enough taste in my mouth I'm going back to M2TW and RTW, because I actually want to play in my spare time instead of trying to play. :-)
Obviously HD 3000 will run it on lower settings because I did it and played for a whopping 30 minutes. I still have concerns about heat. I think I stand by my initial conclusion. Yes it will run on low settings, no I don't think it's smart to do so. If I get a hankering to test it again I'll update this post. I'm going to leave S2 installed hoping that maybe I'll feel like doing something with it this fall/winter.
I give up. I cannot get Shogun 2 running in a reliable manner on HD 3000. I'm going back to RTW and M2TW. Each time I think I have it working something bad happens. I'm not saying it won't work. I'm just saying aside from that first time I installed it I haven't got it running clean again. Not sure why.
Since I am planning on buying the next Macbook Pro or Air, which hopefully will contain Ivy Bridge I will post a review on how it runs on that.
So I'll let you know in about 6-12 months. :happy2:
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Followup: I was bored last night so I decided to give this another go. I fixed my mouse pointer issue by running it in windowed mode. This means I can at least test it and adjust settings. By dropping all settings to low I was able to run it without too much heat buildup, running at most about 85c.
Graphics looked like crap in battle mode, but I think that's just some tweaking of the settings. I suspect a mix of mostly low and a few medium settings will produce reasonable results without causing too much lag or heat. I probably won't have any time between now and the new year, but once I get back to testing this I'll post my results after I've tweaked settings. Anyway, it looks like I could potentially get Shogun 2 running without heat concerns.