Do I Need a New Graphics Card?

I keep getting an error when I go into certain places in both Nightfall and Eye of the North. When I go into these certain citys, I get a pop-up from guild wars telling me I have a "Unrecoverable Graphics Drive Error" (Or something like that). I'm not sure what I should do to fix it so I can continue with the game. I asked my dad if I could get a new graphics card, but he said that sence I'm using a Labtop the new Graphics Card might not help. (What?)

So.... I'm really bummed-out and not sure what I need to do to fix it. Any suggestions?

Oh, and I'm only 15 and I really don't know anything about computers or how to fix them, so please try to keep the "computer logo" to a minimum.

yes, you need a new graphics card, this happened to me a while back

If you are using a Laptop, then you can't get a new graphics card.

Tell us the specs of your laptop, if you know how to find out, a simple way is to go to Start > Run > and type in ''DxDiag'' without quotes, then take a picture of the first and second tab and post it here, that can give us an idea. Or you can just tell us the model of the laptop. It could just be that it is too old to play Guild Wars, and isn't playing nice anymore, other than that - you might just need to update the drivers.

My laptop model number (I believe) is PCG-K25. (This was found right underneath my screen.)

I just looked on the bottem on the laptop and it also says PCG-9RFL. So now I'm not sure which one it is.

Do you have 64MB of memory? It's the minimum requirements afaik.

How would I find out?

(Yep, I'm a noob )
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EDIT: Nevermind, I found it, I think I have 446 MB (Which I found by the DxDiag)

Well, 512mb stick - 64 used by integrated graphics = 448 mb, so maybe you have integrated graphics and it is sharing some memory with it, so it only shows up as some odd?

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-PCG-K25-L.../dp/B00029ZUZ4 Is this your laptop? Sony VAIO?

This is what it says on the specs of that laptop about the video card: The K25 features ATI IGP 345M graphics card with 64 MB of shared video memory (meaning that memory is taken from the PC's main RAM)

Yep, that's it.

Alright, well then that is why it shows your ram as that amount, it is sharing the memory with the graphics card since it does not have it's own on board memory. In this case, you will not be able to upgrade your graphics card at all, so you need to update the drivers.

I did a quick search, and here is some graphics card drivers for that model and video card, give it a shot? http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...d=1566&os_id=7 they are really old though.. might help to try and find any ones newer than that, do you know when the last time you updated the drivers on the laptop was?

Hmm http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=PCGK25 unfortunately those seem to be the newest ones that they have - which is likely that you already have them on there now. You can go to the ''Display'' tab in DxDiag and look up in the top right hand corner, there it should display the driver, version, and date.

But about you crashing in EotN and Nightfall, this seems to only happen for people in these two campaigns, there is some graphical feature that integrated graphics chipsets do not like, and older graphics cards don't like them either.. there might be a hotfix for it somewhere, but I wouldn't have a clue on how to find it.

Well, I know that I've personally never updated the Drivers. This computer just sits in our kitchen and my family uses it as needed. I'm the only one who uses it for gaming, so my guess is the Drivers have never been updated, unless they get updated automaticaly somehow. But if not, I wouldn't be surprised if they've never been updated.

I doubt they have in that case.

That laptop in particular is quite old, and at best is really only suited for what your family uses it for, I wouldn't exactly say it would be a great gaming computer.

And considering that the last driver update came out a while before Guild Wars was released, I wouldn't really expect it to play nice with it in some instances, at best I'm sure it only runs on lowest settings?

Yep, I run everything on the lowest settings and I'm still only getting about 10FPS in cities.


Hey, thanks a lot for your help so far. You've been very nice and helpful. I've got to go now though, and I won't be back for about 3-4 hours. I might come back on later, but I'm not sure. But again, thanks for all the help you've been!

Hehe, no problem.

Maybe if you're lucky, you can snag a new computer if you are interested enough, Guild Wars is a much better experience on max settings with a decent amount of FPS. Good luck with things anyhow, surely there should be some solution in line for you eventually.

Well, does anyone know how I could get my Necromancer out of the city that I'm stuck in?

The only way I can think of is logging on from another computer just long enough to move your Necro. Maybe a friend's house?

Low spec computers struggle with a few places in EotN - this is not the first time I've heard of people getting "stuck" in a town.