New games requiring unsupported video cards

KooBrewoP said:

I couldnt get Neverwinter nights to play on my 2ghz Macbook, so i contacted Aspyr and this is what i got:


Hello, xxxxx. Thanks for contacting us.

The problem here, unfortunately, is the integrated Intel GMA chipset in your Macbook. This game cannot run on non-dedicated video hardware, and this is the reason it is crashing.

Supported video cards are: NVIDIA GeForce 7600, 8600
ATI Radeon X1600, X1900, HD 2400, HD 2600

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Aspyr Technical Support


Is this a common to all new games?, and has my 1yr old macbook already gone out of date? any workarounds?

P.s same problem with Command and Conquer.

Click to expand...

New games don't require unsupported cards (I'm not even sure that makes sense since logic would dictate that cards required are therefore supported). You have a Macbook, which lacks the type of hardware acceleration needed to play most modern games. The MBP is the laptop you would need to play these games, as they have dedicated video hardware.

To answer your last question no, your MB is not out of date - you are just asking it to do something it was never intended to do. I am unaware of any workarounds.

To an big extent this is even true in the Windows World. A lot of the new games require "x" amount of dedicated Ram for video and will continue that route as games get more complicated (i.e. Sound and Graphics Not the game itself). So a lot of these ultra-cheap PC machines that you can buy use integrated graphics to cut cost. A lot of users do not read this in the details of what they are buying and find out later when they cannot get it to do what they want. But at least on those machine there is an option to upgrade the Video if they have an available video slot. It was reading about these items and coming from the PC World that convinced me to go the more expensive route and buy my MBP.

Bill......

As others said, it's not out of date, you're just asking it to do something it hasn't been designed to do...

The most common thing required by not just newer games but some older games as well is dynamic lighting or a certain level of pixel shading.

If it's the GMA950 your referring to, it's definitely not design to play games, but it is/was a base standard level type graphics card similar to the intel cards most basic Dells and IBM thinkpads shipped with.

It's pretty much been said, it's not outdated, just not designed to do what you want it to do.

True on Windows or Mac

The Intel GMA950 is a DirectX 6/7 GPU with software extensions to allow it to do some DX8 games. It is extremely limited in what games it will play.

IMO, I think this is a major reason why WoW is so popular. It will actually run on Intel integrated graphics (44% of the market).

Hands down, the Macbook is (almost) not a gaming machine.

If you have a Santa Rosa Macbook, you MIGHT be able to find some games that run, however it'd likely be like.. watching a slide show of your great aunt Ruth* playing chess.



*fake name.