Why can't I play that game?

We get a fair bit of enquiries from people who are confused about why their integrated graphics solution cannot play games like Zoo Tycoon 2, Rome: Total War or Call of Duty. After all, the integrated graphics is a 3D Accelerator correct? Yes it is! But a lot of games over the last year and more require a 100% Direct X9.0 compatible video card. No VIA integrated graphics controller is Direct X9.0 compatible. Now I must point out, that doesn't make them bad solutions. They are a great cost effective way of building a highly capable PC without the need of a separate video card. And believe it or not, most PCs in this world aren't used for gaming! In fact a lot of the enquiries we get are from parents who are contacting us because either they or their teenager has tried to install a new game on a PC that up until that point played every other game their kid wanted to play. That is, until they joined the big league and picked out a graphically intensive game. Anyways, let's look at some examples....

The system used in this article is a P4M266 chipset board that features a VIA UniChrome integrated graphics solution.

Zoo Tycoon 2 will install as per usual. When you start the game, it might pop up with an error message like this.

You can "play" the game but it's incredibly jerky and slow. Call of Duty will also install as per normal but you won't be able to even read the menu when you load it up.

How to tell if you do have integrated

VIA integrated display adapters can be identified in Device Manager. Open Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager and look under Display Adapters. A list of VIA integrated graphics controller chips can be found here.

The other tell-tale sign, if you're not sure about the name given to the display adapter in Device Manager, is to simply look at the back of your PC. Is the monitor plugged into the back I/O plate of the mainboard, or into a video card below it?

(The blue plug from the monitor is plugged into the onboard video adapter socket)

You could also run SiSoft Sandra to ID your motherboard and look at the product specifications on the manufacturer's web site. Full instructions on how to do this can be found here.