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I would think youd be able to at least run it with 'Console' settings at 60fps...
If it helps, Im playing at 'High' settings, except I enabled Transparency Supersampling, disabled Higher Quality Postprocessing and Ambient Occlusion, and set Shadows to Medium...
Game runs at 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz with Vsync On, using the above settings...
Windows 10
i7-7700HQ
GTX 1060 6GB
32GB RAM
Your components (CPU and GPU) are most likely soldered to the motherboard, which make replacement cost-prohibitive, if its even possible at all.
If your current set up is unable to run the game to your satisfaction, then it would be more efficient to upgrade the entire laptop for a more modern one. Upgrading RAM or changing to an SSD can help improve performance a bit, but the improvement wont really be worth the cost...
Ain't planning on getting a new laptop anytime soon. That's why I am asking this question in advance to make sure I am not bricking my pc.
I already checked online that the processor and the graphics card has only around 5% bottleneck if I go for replacement. The one I am using now is at a whooping 25-30%.
The original graphics card stopped working and hanged when booting up in normal mode, forcing me to boot up in Safe Mode to continue using it. The first time was after 4-5 years and was repaired twice. Around 2 1/2 years ago, it was deemed irreparable after the third failure.
It was after this that I had to change the card altogether.
As for the original card itself, I could no longer remember it. When I was using it, I never really looked up what it was.
It's possible the repair shop was unable to find the original part anymore and found a substitute that worked (or it could even have been the same model, as you said, you don't know what the original was), but replacing a GPU on a laptop is nothing like on the desktop. You can't just go out, buy a 3080, and slap it in there. These are specialized parts, made to go into the lapop models that they are going into.
What am I supposed to do then? Right now, the community's answer to my current setup is a big "NO" even at the lowest settings. Do I just upgrade the RAM to 16GB and pray that it is enough for me to even play CS4?
Right now, my graphics card/GPU is AMD Radeon HD 6600M.
I looked up in advance regarding compatibility issues and this was what I got. Look at what is the recommended replacement which people are saying can let me play CS4 for sure.
https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Core_i7-2670QM/Radeon_HD_6620G/0ea00Ef2/8/100/
https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Core_i7-2670QM/GeForce_GTX_1050_(Mobile)/0ea13Wlu/16/100/
Steam's refunding policy is ''no questions asked'' if you refund within 2 hours of playtime and within 2 weeks of buying the game.
2 hours won't be enough to test if I can run CS4, as you can easily breach that time if you lose track of it. Given how dialog-heavy it is and how I need to make sure that would work properly as well, I can't skip them either.
I doubt clearing the first dungeon would be a sufficient test. That's why I'm waiting for the next sale.
I'm buying and keeping CS4 sooner or later. It is just a matter of technical hardware.
For games like this one its only a case of checking how much fps you would get.
No shame in waiting for a sale if you know you probably wont play the game before it becomes cheaper. That will save you money.
Where did you ask, and what were the exact replies? If they told you, you needed to get a better GPU or more RAM then they dont know what they are talking about.
Okay, I found the replies.
To be blunt: they dont know what they are talking about and should not be giving others hardware recommendations. More RAM you dont use is pointless.
8GB of RAM is enough for this game. Its listed under the minimum requirements on the store page.
The Radeon 6600M is a laptop card. But its also a modern card released this year. Since AMD's naming scheme sucks, its possible the people that responded to you didnt know this and thought it was something like a 6630M (release 10 years ago) It is not weak unless compared to higher end cards. It is stronger then my old 980ti (the card I used before my current one) that I still used 5 months ago. Which was a 5 year old card at that point, but top tier at its release.
Your GPU is good enough for the game.
Based on a performance comparison here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6600m.c3776
My 6800XT is about 260% faster (mine is overclocked, so its value is higher then the one in the chart) At 1080p with unlimited fps enabled, im getting between 300 and 400 fps. This is with all other settings maxed.
Just with rough estimates I would say your GPU is easily capable of 60 fps, and more likely 100+ Since it is a new card there shouldnt be any hardware compatibility issues either.
However your CPU is a different matter. If there's an issue its more likely your CPU or the full system will be the problem. I dont know if your CPU can handle 60 fps for this game.
No point in getting a better GPU if your CPU already isnt up to par.
Laptops dont have a very long life expectancy and having one for 10 years is certainly living on borrowed time. With laptops it tends to be better to replace the entire laptop after x years .Maybe at most 5 or 6 years if you really cant afford a new laptop. If a major component like the GPU stopped working I would consider that reason to upgrade to a new laptop asap.
If you are going to upgrade anything, then first thing I would suggest is a better laptop altogether. Second thing would be upgrading the CPU, but since that also requires a new motherboard im not sure how possible that is for a laptop.
If it was a desktop it would increase the cost but it would still be doable.
I dont know how feasable that is for you, but all I can do is try to give a better perspective on what would improve your situation. Unfortunately I dont have any expertise when it comes to upgrading laptop parts individually.
The problem with the internet these days is that everyone wants to share their perspective even when they are clueless and only give poor advice or comments. As such, dont just take my words as absolute fact either. Check around the net to see if my words line up with what you can find on hardware subs and trusted review or comparison sites (NOT Userbenchmark), where the average person is less of a clueless idiot and much less likely to give you poor advice.
The site I linked before is one of the more reliable sites.
That will also you help make more informed decisions in the future when deciding on upgrading your laptop or its hardware.
Some subs for hardware:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/ (if you ever get an Nvidia card again)
There's some general hardware subs too, like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/
ps: I'm sorry for the community giving you bad advice.
This year? How is that even possible? Then what was the card I have using for the past 1-2 years?
The second reason why I wanted to change the graphics card is that ever since I changed it, my laptop would occasionally (around once every 1-2 months) suffer error 0x00000116 shortly after an AMD display driver error.
This only happens WHEN OPENING certain programs. Like opening Battle.net after hibernation or even Word 2013. This can also happen if I was opening certain apps on Bluestacks (the phone app emulator). I was hoping that changing it to a more powerful one would finally make it stop.
It is noted that this never happens for Steam and their games. Thank goodness.
Finally, back to CS4, I asked around because on the first week, most of the posts are about how set-ups that can run CS3 on "High" can barely take on CS4 at "Low". Given how I played CS3 at "Console" and "Low" with no issues, I had to ask around.
What GPU (exact name) do you actually have, and what do you plan on upgrading to?
For hardware components a different letter can make more of a difference then you would think. This is mainly a problem with the hardware manufacturers. They should really have numbers that make more sense. AMD in particular has really weird numbers that make no sense.
If your card is only 2 years old it should still run the game at playable framerates.
GPU's having errors like that is more likely due to issues with their drivers. 1 error everyone month or 2 months is not too alarming.
In your case, the CPU and its motherboard are still both 10 year~ old, right? And the windows install or RAM? There's tons of things that can be going wrong at that point.
I havent done any comparisons myself. The game does seem to require more, but there's still tons of settings that can be turned down or even completely off. I dont know how much of a difference it makes. Its understandable you would wonder if you can play this game without problem.
This is also why I recommend trying it in the refund period. Nothing else is going to offer a better idea of what your performance will be.
If thats the case, just purchase it now... See how it runs, and lower graphics/resolution as necessary. If you are using the discrete GPU (and it is operating correctly), you should be able to get good fps, although it might come at the cost of very low resolution/graphics.
Im pretty sure they have a Radeon HD 6600m series card, which is not the exact model number.... And is also from 2012-ish...
My old laptop will do something similar also, after waking up. In my case, Im pretty sure it is because of drivers though.
This is part of the reason I switched from AMD to nVidia, and about the only thing I didnt like with my old laptop... Mine didnt start completely crashing on wake-up until after Windows 8/10 forced updates and broke drivers... But the laptop always had some 'issues' with the switchable graphics, and AMD driver support was not very good....
Do you remember if they changed only a GPU, or the entire motherboard?
There is a small chance that both your CPU and GPU are socketed/slotted, allowing them to be user-replaceable. But there is no way to know this without more details about the laptop, like the exact brand and model number.
So, assuming your GPU can be replaced independently of the motherboard... Besides the technical limitations imposed by the age of your system, like memory speed and bandwidth, you also have to consider cooling and power requirements of a new GPU...
Finding driver/software support might get pretty interesting as well...
But before you can even get that far.... You need to figure out what type of interface/slot your laptop is using (if it is not soldered), whether it is proprietary or not, and if it is even compatible with a GTX 1050m...
I dont know if I can post it, but this might be an interesting read:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/successful-mxm-gpu-upgraded-laptops.805136/
I know you said you dont intend on getting a new laptop... And Im never against modifying or upgrading anything, but I think it would only be a time consuming and expensive headache to pursue installing a newer GPU in a 10+ year old laptop that wasnt designed for it.
They replaced their last GPU, apparently 2 years ago. Their words are confusing (I dont blame them, but rather AMD's model naming) so I asked them to clarify.
If it is indeed a card from 2012 im not sure why they would have upgraded to it. If upgrading to a 1050m that would not be a good upgrade, as that card is pretty weak and while it can play this game, it would be a poor investment. Even more so without upgrading the CPU.
That is my sentiment as well.
You're talking about an entirely different card.
Radeon HD 6600m (what he mentioned in the other thread)
vs
Radeon RX 6600m (what you mistakenly assumed he had)
The HD 6600m is roughly 200% weaker than the min-spec 650ti listed. I couldn't find an actual benchmark listing for it, but did find one for the 6700m which released at the same time and well that one showed a 184% difference ( https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-Ti-vs-AMD-Radeon-HD-6700M/2189vsm7769 ), so it's a fairly easy assessment to make that the 6600m would be slightly weaker than the 6700m.
"The AMD Radeon HD 6600M and 6700M share similar specifications, both featuring clock speeds between 500MHz and 725MHz, and DDR3 or GDDR5 memory clocks speeds between 800MHz and 900MHz. These chips also feature 480 stream processors, 24 texture units, 32 Z/stencil ROPs, and eight colour ROPs."
You can read more about the card here: https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000m/1/
Also sure, 8GB does hit min spec. However do notice that recommended spec lists 16GB. Also Windows is a hog. It never hurts to have more ram. I have 32GB ram and just booting Windows up, I'm using over 10GB of ram. Checking memory usage while playing this game I'm usually sitting around 20-22 GB used (not for the game, just in total usage). So yes, I always recommend 16GB as the sweet spot for PC gaming, and well RAM is generally fairly cheap in comparison and easily up-gradable in most laptops. In any case, you can most certainly get by with 8GB with this game, but if you're wanting to get the most out it settings-wise you'll need the 16GB listed under the recommended listing.