Can anyone see a problem with this plan?

Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
So my little bro and I have gotten into Battleforge...but the problem is, he's the only one with a computer fast enough to run it. He's got a Pentium E5200, a 4670(512MB), 2GB of RAM, and Vista Starter. My plan is as follows:

1- Create a virtual machine running Windows 7 pro, with hardware acceleration enabled

2- Use a 4GB flash drive and Readyboost to help remedy the RAM issue

3- Hook up a second monitor, and fullscreen the VM on it. (using HDMI & D-Sub)

4- Attach a second USB mouse and keyboard, and assign them to the VM only, so they won't affect the Host.

5- Same as #4 with a second sound card. (the original Sound Blaster Live, lol)

6- Hopefully play a game with my little bro.


Have I overlooked anything?

edit: Alright, I'm stumped...I installed the guest additions in safe mode, DXDiag shows D3D enabled, but I still get a message from the game saying that the proper shader model (2.0) isn't supported. I can't even use aero...stupid Win7 basic. :(
 
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You won't get anywhere near full hardware acceleration from a VM,not to mention a 4670 would not be capable of driving battleforge on two separate displays.Also, readyboost does NOT function as ram, so you will be limited in that area.
 
At minimum settings on 1024x768, it should be playable...the other option would be to drive the second monitor using an HD3450 in a PCIe 1x slot, but we'd need to cut the back out of it.

Readyboost moves the page file to a flash drive, right? It's been working ok so far...I ran a couple of browsers with several youtube tabs in the VM and played the game on the host and it worked fine. Was using ~1.8GB of RAM, and 2Gb on the page file. It doesn't need to look great...15fps would be ok for this.

You're right though, the hardware acceleration is giving me a headache. Supposedly, DirectX 9.0c and Shader 3.0 are supported by VBox, if only experimentally, but I can't seem to get them to work. Other people have done this, so I know it's possible...I just can't figure out what I've done wrong.
 
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Vmware supports DirectX and is fully capable of playing a fair bit of games. On my i7 I have run 8 Exteels games at once with no problem or lag.
 
VMWare it is, then. Thanks. :) I'll give it a shot tomorrow, hopefully.

I should use Player, not Server, right? I've only ever used VBox and MS Virtual PC.


Also, adding to the headache, I still haven't even managed to get a second monitor working...my PNY MX-400 won't work alongside the 4670, so unless I can fix it, I can't even test how the dual monitor layout works until I get a stupid HDMI-DVI adapter or a DVI cable. I did succeed at #4, though.
 
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Drenlin said:
At minimum settings on 1024x768, it should be playable...the other option would be to drive the second monitor using an HD3450 in a PCIe 1x slot, but we'd need to cut the back out of it.

Readyboost moves the page file to a flash drive, right? It's been working ok so far...I ran a couple of browsers with several youtube tabs in the VM and played the game on the host and it worked fine. Was using ~1.8GB of RAM, and 2Gb on the page file. It doesn't need to look great...15fps would be ok for this.

You're right though, the hardware acceleration is giving me a headache. Supposedly, DirectX 9.0c and Shader 3.0 are supported by VBox, if only experimentally, but I can't seem to get them to work. Other people have done this, so I know it's possible...I just can't figure out what I've done wrong.
Click to expand...
Readyboost does not move the page file, it simply caches recently used files in order to load them quickly.
 
bomberboysk said:
Readyboost does not move the page file, it simply caches recently used files in order to load them quickly.
Click to expand...

Ok, not exactly the page file, but it uses it much the same way as standby memory, right? It does help. I saw a significant increase in performance, and RAM usage with both OS's stayed comfortably below 2GB.

THERMAL-REACTOR said:
Vmware Workstation 6.5 and up support full DX.
Click to expand...
Does it have to be Workstation? I've been reading reports of Server and Player supporting DX9 as well...

I won't have the cache to buy any thing for a while. It's all I can do to keep gas in the car. :(
 
Drenlin said:
Does it have to be Workstation? I've been reading reports of Server and Player supporting DX9 as well...

I won't have the cache to buy any thing for a while. It's all I can do to keep gas in the car. :(
Click to expand...

Yea if you know they will support it then go for that. I just know from my experience with workstation that for sure it supports it.
 
Well, I've got everything working except the USB devices. I can't figure out how to disconnect them from the host.

The game runs fine, though. With the VM running at 1280 x 1024 and the host at 1440 x 900, it was nearly playable...with both at 1024 x 768 it should be fine.
 
I still haven't figured out the USB devices...it was simple in VirtualBox but in VMWare Player I can't seem to find any setting relating to it.
 
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