Won't detect my Nvidia Card

[Christin]

When I try to play the game on my PC with a Nvidia card, it doesn't detect the card and tries to run using the built in card to horrible effect. When I run the game on my PC with the Radeon card I have no problem. Anybody able to run on an Nvidia machine?

[MrEvilness]

what kind of machine is it, i have had issues with other games and my laptop with switchable graphics card. what fixed it for me was going into the bios and change the switchable graphics setting from dynamic to fixed. All this does for me is make the laptop use the greater of the two cards all the time.

[Midnight Blue]

Wow, I had no problem with my old-as-the-highway nV 6600 GT...then again, I used XP32. Now Imma on a ATI x1650 and Win7 64.

[Christin]

I will try again after the machine and operator cool off for a while. :)

[Enhanced_Chimera]

Might sound silly but have you tried going into the nvidia control panel and see if there is X3AP.EXE in the manage 3d settings field i had to add the EXE and select the high performance NVIDIA card when i first got this laptop

[Christin]

I will definitely check that.

[Christin]

I tried the game today and it detected the card just fine. I love the magic of PC gaming.

[Iralith]

I know things are working for you at this point, but in case anyone else has the same problem . . .

I installed this today and had a similar difficulty--GeForce 660M, Windows 7, game was only willing to notice my Intel 4000 HD and didn't see the nVidia card. This seems to have fixed it for me:

- Open up the nVidia control panel

- Under "Manage 3D settings" --> "Program Settings," click "Add" to manually add a program to customize.

- In the resulting popup window, select "X3AP," then click "Add Selected Program" below.

- Under "2. Select the preferred graphics processor for this program:" pick "High-performance NVIDIA processor" rather than the default "Use global setting." This ought to force X3:AP to use your graphics card instead of your integrated graphics.

One thing I have no idea about: is it defaulting to integrated graphics because of a power setting? Enh, dunno; could easily check. In any case, I'm glad I spotted this way to force a program to use one adapter or another.

[mmmcheesywaffles]

In addition to Iralith's good info...

Some motherboards come with utilities [e.g. Asus ROG ] that allow you to set up specific card selection within Windows. I haven't seen this problem with the ATI Catalyst drivers. Hopefully it is an NVidia only issue.

I really hope it is a BIOS/driver issue as another possibility is that your trouble could be temperature related. For that; reseating the Graphics Card is a good first option.

[Misfend]

Had some problems with my NVIDIA 560 Ti until I downgraded drivers then worked fine.

[Bones]

I'm willing to bet these are all laptops. Some gaming laptops will have two video chipsets, one Nvidia and one Intel, the Intel is used while the laptop is on battery power for longer battery life.

You can force it to always use the Nvidia card by either disabling the Intel card in device manager, or setting the preferred gpu to Nvidia instead of Auto in the Nvidia control panel

[mmmcheesywaffles]

Автор сообщения: Bones

I'm willing to bet these are all laptops. Some gaming laptops will have two video chipsets, one Nvidia and one Intel, the Intel is used while the laptop is on battery power for longer battery life.

You can force it to always use the Nvidia card by either disabling the Intel card in device manager, or setting the preferred gpu to Nvidia instead of Auto in the Nvidia control panel

Many motherboards also have onboard graphics too. Especially with the improved onchip graphics from Intel CPu's like the i3770k and others. Sometimes the BIOS is one developed on other boards and made to fit. Sometimes that fit is not quite right.

When the BIOS fails to make proper use of the hardware you get timing issues that can cause software to fall over.

It's a bit like when you want to take a car off a car park with an automatic barrier. If you wait too long the poorly designed barrier will come down on your car. If you try to leave too fast you will hit the barrier. When dealing with two cars the barrier needs to 'see' both vehicles or it would let one car follow the other out without dropping, and people might try to do that to avoid paying. On a motherboard the various parts of the machine are given processor time through 'Interrupts'. Failure to handle the Interrupts correctly can cause Operating Systems to fall over during boot. They still usually boot, but part of the hardware is either not recognised or identified wrongly.

So.... one thing to try when hardware glitches is to open and close the Operating system fully without running any other software in between. That way the software of the Operating System can sometimes align properly with the BIOS. You may have noticed that your machine soemtimes boots up differently from others. Unfortunately with the latest Operating Systems they tend to autoupdate often and this can lead to problmes when each time the machine boots it is having to realign everything.

Try doing at least 2 cold boots - with no other software booted in between. Just open and close the Operating System. A cold boot means a complete close down,... power off too.

If a machine is more than about 3 years old it is worth also thinking about renewing the motherboard battery. Once those batteries fail they can introduce similar timing faults.

Having said that.... in this case it does look like its a GPU BIOS/Driver issue. Perhaps the Driver is failing to interface between the Operating System and the BIOS on the motherboard.

[Bones]

Yes, I fully understand. I'm guessing here that the OP is running an Alienware laptop as they are all configured this way. Which is why I suggested checking the Nvidia control panel setting first.

[paranoid nendoroid]

Автор сообщения: Iralith

I know things are working for you at this point, but in case anyone else has the same problem . . .

I installed this today and had a similar difficulty--GeForce 660M, Windows 7, game was only willing to notice my Intel 4000 HD and didn't see the nVidia card. This seems to have fixed it for me:

- Open up the nVidia control panel

- Under "Manage 3D settings" --> "Program Settings," click "Add" to manually add a program to customize.

- In the resulting popup window, select "X3AP," then click "Add Selected Program" below.

- Under "2. Select the preferred graphics processor for this program:" pick "High-performance NVIDIA processor" rather than the default "Use global setting." This ought to force X3:AP to use your graphics card instead of your integrated graphics.

One thing I have no idea about: is it defaulting to integrated graphics because of a power setting? Enh, dunno; could easily check. In any case, I'm glad I spotted this way to force a program to use one adapter or another.

You're a great person!

[Bou]

Got the same problem. The Nvidia control panel is already set to my Nvidia GT 630M card. The Albion Prelude launcher only detects my integrated Intel 4000 HD.

[Bou]

I have turned on the Nvidia GPU desktop activator icon and this tells me my Nvidia GPU is active when playing Albion Prelude on the Intel 4000 HD ingame setting while having it set to my Nvidia card in the Nvidia control panel. I also get an increase of at least 20 fps when selecting the dedicated card in the control panel compared to using the integrated one via the same panel while keeping the graphical settings the same. So this tells me it actually uses my dedicated card despite the game telling me otherwise.