windowed mode & intel graphics problem?

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:27 am

I am making a 2D game with PB for Windows. It strictly uses DirectDraw, no D3D/Sprite 3D commands and it runs in windowed mode.

One of my beta testers said it was really slow, so to make sure it wasn't my coding, I sent him a windowed version of Paul's Lady Bug game, which also only uses DD. Same problem with Paul's game.

My tester has DX installed and has the latest drivers installed. Unfortunately, his computer has a mobo video chip, an Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (64mb shared vram).

Do intel video chips have problems with Windowed mode DirectDraw? I know that my SiS & Savage will usually crap out on Windowed DD, But I thought Intel didn't have this issue.

Anybody have any experience or advice with PB, Windowed Direct Draw & Intel video chips?

Unfortunately, here in the USA, most new computers sold only have built in mobo video chips and Intel is the most dominant right now.

Any help is appreciated.

..::Origin::.. · Post by **..::Origin::..** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 4:44 am

In laptops in seems, but i think AMD is soon going to take the lead.

This is odd though, i once had an old intel gfx card and it ran fine with DD,DX8,D3D etc, i don't see why it doesn't work for this person.

Thalius · Post by **Thalius** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 2:12 pm

Intel's Centrino Speedstep enabled ?

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:53 pm

I've had quite a bit of experience with windowed screens in Delphi, Gamemaker and PureBasic on machines using the IntelExtreme II onboard video and never encountered a problem. SiS never seems to work at all, regardless of development language, so I can confirm that part. But the intel stuff, with 5 different projects running on hundreds of machines, no issues. The problem probably lies elsewhere. Could be any number of other issues but I wouldn't suspect Intel's video chipset.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:23 pm

Yea my laptop's intel gfx works fine with sprite and sprite3d.

THe only problem I've ever had with intel was with Opengl games and that was quite a few years ago.

Character · Post by **Character** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:09 pm

The only laptop I've around here is a Compaq with a Mobility Radeon 7500 (On Mobile Intel Pentium 2Ghz).
It runs fine in windowed mode. Maybe it's useful info for you although it's not a Intel video.

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:35 am

Thanks for the help and advice guys. You are not going to believe what the problem was. You know when you right-click on your screen and bring up the display properties and under advanced settings you can slide the little slider to disable hardware acceleration? Well, this dumbass had it disabled for some reason.

This guy is a long time friend and retro-style game lover, but he isn't very computer savvy, which makes him an ideal tester for me.

He had me paranoid as I know nothing about the Intel GFX chips. Heck, even the new notebook I am considering buying has an Intel GFX chip in it.

In laptops in seems,

Here in the USA, they throw the Intel GFX chips in everything. You can go to WalMart, Best Buy, etc and see major brand desktops & desktop packages with $999.99 price tags on them and they still only have an Intel GFX in them. Of course with notebooks, it seems the Intel GFX is dominant, although I will cut them some slack there as I am sure that it uses less power than the ATI/Nvidia chips.

Character · Post by **Character** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 4:00 pm

but he isn't very computer savvy, which makes him an ideal tester for me

--> he has done a good job then. I bet there are more computer savvy's out there who will (ab)use your software.
Maybe a tip to mention in your helpfile or readme file etc?