Buying a laptop and want to play 3D games too?

Laptops are always something to research well into before you buy one. What do you want it to do, will it be used for work mainly or gaming, or a mix of both? You cannot expect a laptop designed for work related usage to play all modern PC games thrown at it. Today we are even seeing games that requires Pixel Shader v3.0 to even run like Tom Clancys Splinter Cell - Double Agent When I was looking to buy a laptop back in 2006 I wanted to use it for work designing databasedriven websites, heavy graphic usage and also be able to play modern 3D games. So I bought a laptop I saw was on sale which had a standard integrated intel graphic card that is fine for work and a dedicated Nvidia Go 6600 256MB card which is fine for gaming.

Europa Universalis 3 Graphic Card Guide v1.2

Europa Universalis 3 is possible the best selling game from Paradox to date, however it also has a steep set of requirements compared to previous Paradox games which includes a required minimum of Pixel Shader v2.0 support and dedicated 128MB RAM on the Graphic Card.

For this discussion I will mostly talk about the various graphic cards (PCI, AGP, PCI-Express) which is clamed to work in EU3 but not actually due to slowness and lag.

First of all, here are the official minimum requirements for EU3
Intel Pentium or AMD Athelon 1.9GHz processor or equivalent
Windows 2000 or Windows XP (home/pro/media edition).
512MB system RAM.
A graphics card with 128MB video RAM and full hardware support of Direct X9.0c including PixelShader 2.0.

Edit: Tested with Vista 32/64bit editions, works but minimum requirements are probably slightly higher then if playing on Win 2000/XP

EU3 PATCH v1.1
As of version v1.1, you can now force the game to run on 64MB graphic cards but Paradox will not give technical support should problems arrise. Successful reports from people such as AdmiralNelson have confirmed using the ATI Mobility Radeon X300 64MB works. Also of note is that Paradox might have release a small patch for the demo so its possible to force the game to run on 64MB graphic cards. The newest patch for EU3 is v1.3 which is highly recommeded as it adds various fixes and additions for the game.

Laptops: (Integrated Chipset)
If you are the owner of laptop with an integrated Intel graphic card you are in trouble :/ Currently it seems all Intel cards cannot run EU3 because either they lack Pixel Shader v2.0 or they fail to support it 100% due to "software emulation" which is common practice in integrated laptop graphic cards making it cheaper to produce instead of supporting it directly from its hardware.

Examples of Unsupported Intel Cards:
- Intel GMA 900 & 950
- Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset Family
- Intel® 945G Express Chipset
- Mobile Intel® 915GM /GMS,910GML Express Chipset
- Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family

Laptops: (Dedicated Graphic Card)
If you are the owner of a laptop that has a "real" graphic card you are in a position to enjoy EU3, unless you are on the low end of the scale.

Runs EU3 but will not offer good playability :
- ATI Mobility Radeon XPress 200 128MB
- ATI Mobility Radeon XPress 300 128MB

Runs EU3 and will offer good playability:
- Geforce Go 6600 256MB
- Mobility™ Radeon® 9600 / 9700 / 9800 series
- Mobility™ Radeon® X600 / X700 / X800 series
- Mobility™ Radeon® X1300/ X1400 / X1500
- Anything highter

PCI ONLY SYSTEMS:
The old standard of a PCI interface for Graphic cards has long since gone out and replaced by the AGP Port which was then replaced by the PCI-Express Interface that is standard today.

Currently the most powerfull card there is for the PCI platform is ATI's X1550 (out as AGP version too) which should play EU3 fastest on the PCI platform) The Geforce 6200 256MB from Nvidia and the Radeon x1300 by ATI (available in AGP too) are also optional here but slower, both has support up to Pixel Shader v3.0 and enough ram to support EU3. The two last mentioned cards are the minimum recommended 3D cards to actually play EU3 fairly, so if you are stuck on an old PC and cannot afford a new, these two offers playability in EU3 without massive lag. Alot of you will probably say "but I have the Geforce 5200 (AGP too ) can I play with that?" It supports EU3 but to take a Quote from Stonewall, Supermoderator on the EU3 forums "bottom of the barrel" It's the slowest of all cards that can run EU3, so to cut it short, you cannot play EU3 with this card without experincing massive slowdowns, 2-4 second mouse click delays, ultra slow map scrolling...stay away from the Geforce 5200 card, you have been warned.

AGP ONLY SYSTEMS:
The are still alot of PC systems out there that uses the AGP interface, including one of the PC's at home. The choices of graphic cards are still many as AGP cards are manufactored and still sold in stores around the world. The cards you must avoid are actually many here, but its not because of Paradox "high 3D requirements" but because Nvidia, manufactor of Geforce cards made horrible slow implementation of Pixel Shader v2.0 support in their entire Geforce 5000 range. Since EU3 must run using PS v2.0, all cards in the Geforce 5xxx range suffers speed problems. This results in as you know from my previous mentions, the Geforce 5200 must be avoided, but this does not stop here, the Geforce 5500 is also reported by Leef, I quote "that card is NOT recommended and will run EXTREMELY POORLY". As for the GeForce FX 5700 and 5900 cards I cannot say confirm anything yet but I believe the performance of the entire GeForce 5xxx range will offer very poor results.

Runs EU3 but will not offer good playability:
- ATI Radeon 9550 128MB
- Geforce 5200 / 5500 128MB / 5700 / 5900 series

Runs EU3 and will offer good playability:
- Geforce 6200 / 6600
- ATI Radeon x1300 / x1550
- ATI Radeon 9500 / 9600 / 9700 / 9800 series
- Anything highter


UNSUPPORTED GRAPHIC CARDS:
The lack of Pixel Shader 2.0 support will prevent the following cards from run EU3
- Mobility Radeon 7500 / 9000 / 9200
- ATI Radeon 7200 / 8500 /9000 / 9100 / 9200 / 9250
- GeForce2 MX / Geforce 4MX
- All GeForce 4xxx cards


UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL!
Nvidia GeForce MX series - The oldest series of cards still available for sale, finding them now is rare, as they are surpassed by both the 5000 and 6000 series and are only suitable for basic computing operations such as word processing and internet browsing.

Nvidia GeForce FX 5000 series - An older but still widely available range of cards, the 5000 series of cards are equivalent to ATI's 9000 series, ranging from very low cost to mid-range cards. They do not have nearly as much geometry processing power as the 6 series, but can hold their own in terms of fill rate.

Nvidia GeForce 6000 series - Launched on April 14th 2004, the GeForce 6 family introduced several important new features to the GeForce product-line: PureVideo functionality, Shader Model 3.0 support, and SLI technology. But perhaps most importantly, the GeForce 6 family addressed the perceived shortcoming of its predecessor Geforce FX family, mediocre Shader Model 2.0 performance. Hence, on both technical and marketing terms, the GeForce 6 enabled NVIDIA to return to a position of competitiveness against its rival, ATI.

Future Updates:
I will continue to update the 3D cards status as I get in various player experinces with EU3. Im especially interested in how well the GeForce FX 5700 and 5900 performs in EU3 :)