Hardware acceleration is either disabled...

[enapoletano]

Hi gang,

I have a feeling I am out of luck but no harm in asking. After installing Windows 7, I cannot run any games. I am getting "Hardware acceleration is either disabled or not supported bla bla bla" With the on board graphics card, games run fine but after installing Matrox G550 PCI card (for dual monitor use) games run slower. I have done the usual update driver through Matrox web site and checked that the hardware acceleration was turned on and it is. I even went into the registry to make sure all parameters are correct. Any advise, besides the obvious and get another card? Thanks for any help.

 

[stormy13]

enapoletano, welcome to the Seven Forums.

One reason for things being slower with the Matrox card being installed could be due to that card being close to 10 years old. That and that card is only a DirectX 6 card,

Matrox G550 GPU - Specifications, and Pictures - GPUReview.com

and with only 32 MB of memory on it, pretty much makes it completely incompatible with Windows 7. Also not sure what Matrox is trying to pull by offering what appear to be Vista and or Server 2008 R2 drivers, as they are nothing more than XP drivers that from the looks of things have been modified so that they will install.

It also doesn't help that the integrated Intel graphics don't have any Windows 7 support,

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18576&keyword=%22gma+900%22&lang=eng

All things considering,

Any advise, besides the obvious and get another card?

would be your best option. You don't say where you are but something like this,

Newegg.com - SPARKLE SX84GS256D2LDPP GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

despite being an older DirectX 10 card (and a low end one at that), would be far better than what you have now without costing a lot.

 

[enapoletano]

Thanks Stormy13

I didn't realize that the card was so old! I figured having the dual monitor capabilities it would be able to handle simple games. Yep, having only the Direct6 feature doesn't help anything. Thats why when I run the assessment on the computer performance I get a base score of 1.0 (Graphics & Gaming graphics the reason). Would you mind telling me why the report cannot find the available memory for the card? If the PC saw the memory, I am sure all the games would work.

Graphics________________________

Total available graphics memory Not detected
Dedicated graphics memory 0 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 0 MB

 

[stormy13]

Probably find it comes down to trying to use what is essentially a completely incompatible card, with at best XP drivers running it. One really sad thing about that card of yours is that it is still available as a PCI-E x1 card,

Newegg.com - SPARKLE SX84GS256D2LDPP GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

too bad the price of it is about 5 times more than it should be considering its specs and how old it really is (you have to go back to the old TNT2 or Rage Fury Pro to find similar spec'ed Nvidia and ATI cards).

All things considering with that card and running Windows 7, it just isn't worth the aggravation of trying to get it to work properly. You don't say what games you're trying to play on it, but unless the games are of a similar vintage and/or requirements of the card (and then if the games are that old, good chance they won't run on Windows 7 anyway) a new card is the way to go.

 

[bobkn]

Probably find it comes down to trying to use what is essentially a completely incompatible card, with at best XP drivers running it. One really sad thing about that card of yours is that it is still available as a PCI-E x1 card,

Newegg.com - SPARKLE SX84GS256D2LDPP GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

I think that this is the link you'd intended:

Newegg.com - matrox G55-MDDE32F G550 32MB PCI Express x1 Workstation Video Card

 

[stormy13]

Oops, you're right.

Too many tabs open at the time.

 

[Darician]

You have the same exact PC as I use at my work except mine only has 1 GB of RAM. I would suggest getting a GeForce GT 220 or Radeon HD 4650 (or 5570) and you'd have good performance.

With that Matrox, there just isn't really anything that can be done with Windows 7.