Recognising Newer Graphics Cards for Sims2

It's definitely not an either - or. I have Win 7 and IE10 (not that I use it, I'm Firefox all the way), and TS2 runs like an anti-aliased dream - on a Radeon card, I might add. So it's not just a matter of whether or not you have IE10 installed.

After spending a couple of hours poking around and getting nowhere, I'm going to bat my eyelashes, say pretty please, and ask for some help.

I play TS2 on a Samsung laptop that has both an Intel® HD Graphics (Core i5) (copying the whole lot from "Chip Type" because these words mean nothing to me, heh) and an NVIDIA GeForce 315M, which kicks in for playing games. However, when I go into advanced settings to find the hex ID and card name (as per the instructions at the beginning of the thread), it only shows me the Intel details. Where else would I look to find the NVIDIA card information?

Sounds like an interesting one darthfluffle; kiri is in Australia so there might be a bit of a delay before she gets back to you.

Hi Darthfluffle - lets start by looking at your ThenameofYourPC-Config-log.txt that you can find in the log folder of your game

\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Log\

If you go down to the section that's headed "Graphics Device Info"

The Name of the card that your Game is using is there.
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
Name (database): AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series

(That's mine)

First up, it will tell you what card you are using. This is important, because if the game is using the Intel card there's lots of things it can't do.

A couple of lines down you will see this line:
Chipset: Vendor: 1002, Device: 6819, Board: 25531458, Chipset: 0000

The Number on the Device, mine is 6819, is the number to use - and you add a '0x' in front of it. So my card id to use in the Video Cards.sgr is 0x6819

But before we do that - if you can attach your config-log.txt we can see what the game thinks is the problem.

I found this!
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce 315M
Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce 315M <<NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!>>
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 0a7a, Board: c0a2144d, Chipset: 00a2

txt is here:
  [computername]-config-log.txt (Size: 10.31 KB / Downloads: 459) (hopefully. I'm woefully unpracticed when it comes to forum code)

And hello from New Zealand!

Well, the good news is that it's picking up the Nivdia card no problem. So that's great. All the information that we need can be gotten from the -config-log.txt that you posted up.

The expansion pack you're using is:
Name: The Sims 2 EP9

Which is Mansion and Gardens. So all the changes will need to be made in the Mansion and Gardens set of folders.

Your texture memory is also fine:
Texture memory: 3696MB

Anti-aliasing is off, so your game thinks it doesn't have the oomph... but looking at the spec it clearly does. So this will be a coding change in the graphics rules.sgr.

Here's the things you need to do. I've put each section in a spoiler code to make it a little easier to work out what you need to do.

Save your Old files(Click to View)

The folders involved (there are 2)
\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Config\ <-- this one has to be changed for your game.
\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\CSConfig\ <-- this one is other things - I believe it's Bodyshop, etc.

Make copies of Video Cards.sgr and Graphics Rules.sgr

I generally just add a suffix of -old on them.

Setting up the Video Cards.sgr(Click to View)

Then open up Video cards.sgr with a text editor, and scroll down until you see

vendor "NVIDIA" 0x10b4 0x12d2 0x10de

(The vendors are in order - ATI, NVIDIA, INTEL, Other)

Scroll to the end of that section and include
card 0x0a7a "NVIDIA GeForce 315M"

(indent it as appropriate, it looks better that way, although it doesn't change anything).
And save it.

This will not fix the problem, it will just let the graphics rules.sgr that we know how it works.

I'm just going through the code in the graphics rules.sgr now. Nothing is jumping out at me, so what I may end up doing is put some trace in it, and get you to add the graphics rules.sgr in and load up your game, then post up the resulting -config-log.txt (because that's where the trace will appear).

The Graphics Rules in the zip has got a suffix of ' - NvidiaTrace' in the name. Remove that before opening up the game.
Also, if you get a DirectX message and error - that just means that I stuffed up with the trace code, swap the old file back in and let me know.

Attached File(s)

  GraphicsRules-NvidiaTrace.zip (Size: 7.24 KB / Downloads: 438)

Is there anything in specific I should do ingame with the trace version of the graphics rules in? Or just load up and play a bit before sending them back?

That update is required to have IE10 installed. Uninstall it and IE10 goes as well. Reinstall IE10, and it's back. While there are ways to have Sims 2 run fine with that update, it's best to optimize things as best as you can. It's like running a game in wine or on a virtual machine in Linux. Sure it may work, but it's not very ideal. This update is what restricts texture memory to 32MB thus preventing AA and resolution changes. Without the update, only Radeon HD 7000 series users will have to do some tweaking, which is relatively minor.

Montosaurus - it's a small tweak to get the game to run so that people can use IE10 as well. Seriously? I'm not sure why you're continuing to make a point about it. And no, without the update there are plenty of other cards that have a problem as well as the Radeon HD7000. The bottom line is that there are plenty of people who want to both use IE10 and play the sims and they can.

Darthfluffle - yup, just load it up. and pick a hood. You don't need to play. The config-log.txt is generated as your game initialisation finishes.

* leefish shuffles in

@Montosaurous - I am not trying to censor you in any way, but lets keep it on track. The point of this topic is to help people to get their graphics to work in a game that is starting to show it's age in programming terms. Please feel free to post any finding you may have to help others achieve that goal, but don't "clutter" the topic.

Hopefully kiri will have a tutorial soon and people can make the tweaks on their own