Game is really slow on lower configuration devices with Standard VGA graphics adapter.

I have developed a small card game like Spider Solitaire. I want to deploy for lower configuration devices with inbuild VGA. Problem is my game running properly with updated system but running very slow on lower configuration devices. animation running really slow. Mainly those system where Standard VGA graphics adapter is installed. Devices have 4GB RAM, P4 Processor, Intel 915 Chipset. I want a solution to rum my game on these lower configuration devices.

 

There is no such thing as a „standard VGA graphics adapter“ hardware. This „standard“ wording is indicative of a missing video card driver, so Windows falls back to its universal default, works across any video card, driver. That‘s what Windows calls this driver, a standard VGA graphics adapter.

The performance of that driver is abysmal even on potent hardware, it only exists for the user to boot up into Windows and be able to see something on the screen. Usually to be able to download and install a proper graphics card driver. The VGA driver will never run any game at adequate speed.

This system may have a GPU on the motherboard (I cannot remember P4 ever having built in GPUs) for which you should try to locate and install a driver. The GPU may be an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 on the MoBo though - just a hunch but if true, it will still not perform well.

 

Thank you for the answer. Yes, the GPU is Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 and I want to deploy on this low-end graphics. My game is really small and there is no huge animation. Please suggest if there is any way to make it work, by reducing framerate or quality etc.?

 

First try and get a driver for that GMA 950. It may not need more than a proper driver for the game to run adequately.

The Windows Update service may offer a driver (usually under optional downloads). I'd try that first.
This driver here is for Windows 7 but it may also work on Win 10/11: https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...dia-accelerator-driver-for-windows-7-exe.html

 

Thank you very much for your prompt response. I am looking for a solution where I can build my game this way that any device which doesn't have graphics driver can run my game as like Spider Solitaire work on any devices.

 

That is not a reasonable requirement. A system without a proper graphics driver is severely limited for gaming. Most likely, users who own such a system have no interest in anything beyond email, office apps and browsing the Internet. Otherwise they'd have a better system.

It may be better to find a way to detect whether the system is running the default VGA driver and in that case, print a message alerting the user to performance issues and advise to update or install a graphics driver.

 

Intel GMA 950 is a DirectX 9.0c tier device. Unity requires a minimum of a DirectX 10 tier device.

 

AKA "something from 2006 or later" - Like seriously if your hardware is not even DirectX 10 then you are close to 20 years out of date.... thats not a unity problem at that stage, its a problem for a custom engine made for the target hardware in mind.

"The GMA 950 was an integrated graphics solution by Intel, launched on June 1st, 2005"

 

And it was trash even back then.

 

Absolutely, from the hardware page "The GPU is operating at a frequency of 250 MHz, which can be boosted up to 400 MHz."

I genuinely think it may be easier to get unity built games to run on a Raspberry pi than the GMA 950

OP at this point, if you genuinely want this game to run on that hardware I would write it using SDL making sure to use SDKs from around the year 2005 (if you can even find those versions)

Otherwise you may just have to be realistic and not target tech this old if you want to use a modern engine

 

If your target audience is using PCs from almost 20 years ago, you must use technology from that era.

AFAIK Windows 10 doesn't even have hardware accelerated drivers for such cards, the entire UI (and all D3D games) will render in software-mode. And because the CPU is old enough to drink in many countries, this mean even an empty Unity window with nothing on it will run at horrible framerates.

If you have such old PC that is still in working condition, you might be able to sell it for a good price since there's a growing community centered around "retro" PCs to play old PC games in time-accurate hardware and OSes.

 

It's also restricted to just 256 MB of video memory which at the time would have placed it on par with dedicated hardware but is now far below even the cheapest of Android phones, and since the processors that shipped are 32-bit total system memory is going to be at most 3 GB which is also really bad when Windows wants 2+ GB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units#Third_generation

 

Such hardware likely actually exists, but it will be something from 1980s, which can go up to VGA 13h mode and not higher.

I can't name even one such GPU. Something like Trident 8800 will be close, but still goes above 13h mode.

This can actually be done, but, uh you'll be running on software rasterization. It will look like Doom I or Quake I. And you can't build such game with unity.

A somewhat more sane approach would be to build the game using a GUI framework - either Qt or raw WinGDI. That's because those can fall back to slow software rendering if no acceleration is available. However, rendering speed will be very slow.

Anyway, the bottom line is while you can theoretically make a game t hat will run on any device without graphics driver, it is not a reasonable goal to pursue, because there's no gain and such game will not look good. Pretty much anything runs with hardware acceleration these days, so it is better to target hardware accelerated devices with properly installed drivers.

 

As mentioned before, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle trying to get anything from Unity, even older versions of the engine, to work well on this. This is the sort of situation where you'd be better off either removing it from your minimum spec target (this chipset is 18 years old) or finding/writing another engine that can reasonably target this.

 

To give some perspective on how ancient that PC is: it's almost as old as the original 8-bit NES was when that same PC was made.