I can’t find the right place to ask this. If someone here actually knows the answer, it’s a bonus. But what I’m really asking is where should I ask this. I am not a big gamer. Once every couple of years I find a game I’m interested in so I’m not very plugged into the gaming community.
I bought a new video game through Steam called Talos Principle. The game loads but then gives me a message “not enough graphics memory” to run the game. The minimum system requirements for video include Intel HD 4000 series, and I have the 4600. It’s not optimal but it should run. I have been doing searches and find questions and answers to all kinds of problems, but not the same one as mine.
What is the issue? Or more to the point, how do I find out? Am I going to need to buy a GPU in spite of meeting minimum requirements?
MINIMUM:
OS: Windows XP 32-bit (with service pack 3) I have Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor: Dual-core 2.0 GHz I have i5-4670K (quad core) 3.40 GHz
Memory: 2 GB RAM I have 16G
Graphics: DirectX 10 class GPU with 512MB VRAM (nVidia GeForce 8600 series, AMD Radeon HD 3600 series, Intel HD 4000 series) I have Intel HD 4600, on-board (no separate graphics card)
DirectX: Version 9.0c Game loaded latest version on install
Hard Drive: 5 GB available space I have 1TB
Sound Card: DirectX9.0c Compatible Sound Card Realtek HD, shold be good here
There’s generally three places to troubleshoot game issues, in order of most to least useful:
A Google search for “game name” “error message” – the quotes are important because you’re telling Google to search for exactly those phrases. I couldn’t find anything useful for this particular issue; did you get the error message right?
Checking the game’s official forums (there isn’t one in this case, sadly)
Asking the publisher or developer directly. In this specific case, it seems like they don’t have a dedicated support channel (shady as hell) and their “Technical support forum” just links to the Steam forum. But apparently their devs do participate in the Steam discussions.
And if you can’t get it working, demand a refund (nicely) from Steam, telling them that you meet system requirements but the game refuses to run and the developer offers no direct tech support.
Steam’s official policy is “no refunds”, but they will refund you if you ask long and hard enough – I’ve gotten multiple refunds from them. You can also do a credit card chargeback.
If you can spare $100 or so, a GTX 750 is a great entry-level dedicated GPU that will make all your games run faster and look better. The integrated cards have come a long way, but a dedicated one is still good for all but the most casual gaming.
I’ve reported this thread to be moved to the Game Room.
However - the on-board video may be your problem:
The game requires 512 MB of VRAM. With onboard video, there is no dedicated VRAM - all RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU, and the GPU can request more RAM as necessary. I’d hazard a guess though, that the game is querying the GPU as to how much VRAM it has available right now, and failing because the GPU hasn’t requested any more VRAM than the minimum as yet.
I don’t know if Windows 7 has a way to preallocate a chunk of RAM to the GPU, but that’s where I’d start looking.
Great suggestion, came close to solving it. However, my BIOS won’t let me allocate more than 256M to the graphics. It presents a menu with four choices, doesn’t let me type in a number. And Talos told me that still isn’t enough. I have a GeForce 9800 GT from a prior build that I haven’t installed in my current build, but I’m not sure it’s compatible with my current motherboard (msi Z87-G41 PC Mate).
Thanks to all! I installed my GPU and all works just fine. The only complication is that the GPU outputs two DVI ports. I use a VGA KVM switch with my work laptop, and so have to keep switching the monitor back and forth between digital and VGA when I switch computers. Not a big problem.