Colin McRae Dirt - Issue with ATi 9500 Pro

[Masterpiece]

Hi,
ATI 9500 pro is meant to be compatible for playing Colin Mcrae's Dirt, but when stared it complains about hardware not supporting shader version 3.
Any ideas how to solve this?
(All latest drivers are installed ofcourse)
Thanks.

[GLH]

Thread renamed

[Grumpy]

I havent looked up the system requirements for the game, nor have I looked at the specs for the ATI 9500 pro but from memory the ATI 9500 pro is not a Shader Model 3 compatable card.

[Masterpiece]

Thanks Grumpy for your reply.
Is there a way to disable shader 3 (maybe reduce video quality) or something similar to play this game?
Thanks.

[acal3000]

Yeah the radeon 9500 is shader 2.0 not 3.0

But if in the specs says is supported it must work

Chek for the in game options for that

If you cannot run game for that chek if the any configuration program oustide the game program chek for some icon in folder where the game is installed

If there is not any game option menu without running the whole game . Check for .INI files or .CFG files in the game dir you could edit them with programs like notepad or similar and chek if there is any option for disable the shaders on them

[Masterpiece]

Thanks acal3000 for your reply.
The game wont run at all. error is reported by a message immediately after clicking dirt.exe
Game has safe mode option, but it wont run either.
No .ini or .cfg files either. There are some .xml files, but no relevant information is present.
Any other options i can try?
Thanks.

[Dragunov]

System Requirements:

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz or Athlon 64 3000+
Memory: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 12.5 GB Free
Video Memory: GeForce 6800/Radeon X1300 or better with Shader 3.0 Support
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.66 GHz or Athlon X2 3800
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 12.5 GB Free
Video Memory: GeForce 8800/Radeon x1950 with Shader 3.0 Support
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

- Supported Graphic Cards
- ATi Radeon x1300, x1600, x1800, x1900, x1950
- nVidia Geforce 6800, 7100, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8800

So no way u can play the game with ur 9500 Pro

[BarryB]

SM3.0 came into the ATI lineup with the X1K series!

[Masterpiece]

thank you all for your help, a new video card will be my next hardware purchase.
...and a new hard disk.
..and a boost for the ram.
or maybe a new lcd screen. oh, and a new mouse/keyboard ofcourse.

All this probably wont happen soon, can anyone tweak my radeon 9500 pro for me? i want to play D.I.R.T!!!

[TippeX]

it cant be done.. its hardware based...

did you actually look at the box / requirements before you (presumably.. but im beginning to doubt it..) bought the game?

[Masterpiece]

ok, couldnt wait no more and i purchased my first nvidia based card: 7600gt.
so the game works pretty well with this card, but not at maximum performance ofcourse.
...and if anyone was wondering...i got a new hd as well, a little boost of ram, and a new monitor! dualcore2 will have to wait a little longer

[wolfsrain]

Nvidia 8600 would have been a better choice. Or even the 8800 GT which is at around 200$(and is based on the same chipset as the newer Nvidia 9 series).
RAM, for Dirt you would need a minimum 2GB. It's a very demanding game and also poorly optimised. So you need a powerhouse to make it function properly.