Sims Medieval - Video Card Requirements

[Pam]

Welcome to our Forum!

That sounds right to me, but check the first post of this thread for a link to all of the requirements for Sims Medieval.

[Crise]

About video memory, so long as the system requirements do not explicitly specify that the video RAM has to be dedicated then it is fine to expect the game to run on setups with shared video memory....

However, shared video memory is dynamically allocated from your system RAM as needed, so if you want a game to perform well while depending on shared video memory that has to be taken into account when checking the requirements for system RAM. Also shared video memory can potentially be slower to access than dedicated video memory (really depends how your card/chipset and driver deal with the allocation and access) so highest graphic settings will probably not be possible when dependent on shared video memory.

That said the reported crashes/bsod's for medieval are not due to insufficient system specs... otherwise EA would have brushed the issue off already. Even though majority of the affected chipsets happen to be low end ones there are also ones included that more than pass the requirements.

[Pam]

That said the reported crashes/bsod's for medieval are not due to insufficient system specs... otherwise EA would have brushed the issue off already. Even though majority of the affected chipsets happen to be low end ones there are also ones included that more than pass the requirements.

What do you mean by bsod?  Not everyone (including me) is familiar with all acronyms. 

[mtglady]

What do you mean by bsod?  Not everyone (including me) is familiar with all acronyms.  

Pam, BSOD is the Black Screen Of Death.  That is something none of us wants to be familiar with .

Edit:  BSOD is the Black/Blue Screen Of Death . 

[Crise]

Pam, BSOD is the Black Screen Of Death.  That is something none of us wants to be familiar with .

Not black, blue... well I suppose it can be black as well but more often it is blue .

[TheChronicR]

Not black, blue... well I suppose it can be black as well but more often it is blue .

Mine is jet black. How's that? TS3 often causes it when playing it for too much (something like 10 hours, and the laptop's battery temperature is HOT, nearly 160 degrees, if you ask me), but never had it with TSM. Hopefully, I'll never even have one.

[dollkey]

I REALLY really wanna play the game but apparently I can't. I did the CanYouRunIt sys requirement check and I got a fail. My question is, if I get additional RAM would I then be able to play it?

I have an Acer Aspire 4736z. Please help me out and click http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q190/faking_it_album/TSMreq.jpg , it will show you the requirements for the game and how my laptop fares in comparison.

I have been able to play the game smoothly until I added the Spy quarters. Then my monitor would black out and flash and then my computer restarts itself. I tried lowering my game graphics, playing in windowed mode 800 x 600, very low graphics but still no go. Please let me know what I need to do to play it. I really love this game.

Thanks so much!

[Gheez]

Hi dollkey,

I had a look on that website at my specs. My processor is slower than yours and my graphics chipset is the 3 series, however I have 3GB of RAM and it results in a pass.  So it looks like, if you got extra RAM, then you would be able to pay.

I play full-screen, all lowest settings and at 800x600. Play is smooth, though not as pretty to look at as it would be if I had a graphics card.

In the meantime, are you patched up to date?  The latest patch solved my crashing problem (my screen went black and the laptop turned itself off) that was caused by placing a building that brought the security level up to over six.  Your current problem sounds similar to what was happening pre-patch.

I've still crashed, on occasion and have no idea why as, after a reboot, I've been able to continue. I've just been making sure to save regularly and exit the game at least every hour.  It's been fine for the last four hours (oops) of game play. 

Good luck.

[Deckayder]

Okay so my computer was crashing, but then I downloaded the most recent patch (second patch EA has made for Medieval) and it hasn't crashed once since then. For anyone who has already bought the game and is wondering if they need to upgrade their system specs, download the patch first. It solved all my issues with the game so hopefully it will for others as well!

Deck

[dollkey]

Thanks I will give that a try.
I did love playing the game with graphics on high because, well, the graphics are pretty good. But whatever it takes to play the game...

[Yeshanu]

Hello - This is my first official post!

I have experienced failure of my video card where my screen goes black, then goes back into the game, then black again. My video card is a NVIDIA Ge Force 9300 GE with 256MB of dedicated video memory. Is this sufficient to run the game? I bought my computer in 2008 and that was the card it came with then.

Have you updated your video drivers lately? It's something to check on every few months, but a lot of people don't know that new drivers can help with some of the crash problems that occur. Just Google "NVIDIA graphics drivers" and you should end up at the official NVIDIA site. Also, as was mentioned above, make sure that you've patched your game.

I got the game installed after the patch came out, have integrated NVIDIA GeForce 8200 (not as good as yours!) and the game works quite well, and I don't even have the settings on minimum.

[dollkey]

My game is patched and I can play quests as long as I don't add buildings I added the mill and it was fine but when I added something else I got the BSOD again and my laptop restarted. I keep getting the message that my display driver crashed and recovered. But I have already updated my drivers. Any suggestions? TIA!

[mtglady]

My game is patched and I can play quests as long as I don't add buildings I added the mill and it was fine but when I added something else I got the BSOD again and my laptop restarted. I keep getting the message that my display driver crashed and recovered. But I have already updated my drivers. Any suggestions? TIA!

Did you upgrade your RAM per your findings in Can You Run It?  You are probably taxing your computer and/or causing overheating problems by continuing to play the game without meeting all of the specs.  This could eventually cause the loss of your laptop.

[dollkey]

I started a new game. It was working fine. I read a post on the EA forum to start with buildings with high security so I did the Barracks, Spy Quarters and Blacksmith but stupid stupid me thought "Yay! Game is working fine! Let me full screen in and gradually up the graphics."

Yep. Blue screen of death.

So that's it. I'm officially giving up on this, as much as it pains me because I've never had this much fun playing ANY Sims game. I'm going to wait until they patch it. There are people who bought extra RAM, increased video card memory, etc and they still get the crash after the patch was installed. Serves me right for getting this right away instead of waiting three months or so until all the bugs are discovered and fixed.

Love the game though. So I will be back once they fix it. Enjoy for me.

ETA
Sorry about that Pam. I read it on here somewhere so I thought that was okay.

[Pam]

Not everyone knows what BSOD is.  Please don't use acronyms, per the Forum Rules.