Sims 2 DirectX? Sims 2 worked before, but then I installed a new graphics card and it doesnt work anymore?

Question

I bought Sims 2 today and installed it on my computer without a problem.

I started playing the game and worked out the controls and everything worked absolutely fine.

But when i tried to build a house, the textures etc. didnt have any detail.

My brother told me it was because i didnt have a graphics card so he gave me his old one, an NVidia 7300 (which is compatible with sims 2, i checked on the ea website).

But then when i tried going back onto the Sims with the new graphics card installed it came up with the error message everyone seems to be getting:

"Failed to find any DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapters in this system! Please make sure you have a DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapter and have installed the latest drivers provided by the manufacturer. The application will now terminate."

I dont understand why the game worked without a graphics card but doesnt work with one. Surely a graphics card can only improve a game.

Any solutions????

Answer 1

firstly, there is no way you could have been playing the sims2 without a graphics card. You wouldn't even have able to see the loading screen if you had no graphics card. All computers have some type of graphics card, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see anything on the screen. You may have just had a chipset, but I don't know if the 7500LE is any better.

Secondly, the LE in that card stands for light edition. Light means it is not capable of handling the 3D acceleration and Transform and Lighting features required of the sims 2.(to put it simply, it does not support DirectX ).

On the EA website it says that the only Nvidia cards capable of playing the Sims2 correctly are the Nvidia Geforce series (GeForce2 and better)

GeForce2

GeForce3, 3 Ti

GeForce4, 4Ti, MX 420, 440

GeForce FX 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950

GeForce 6600, 6800

or the Nvidia� QuadroTM series

Quadro, Quadro2, Quadro4.

Unfortunately your card is not on that list.

Answer 2

The card is not compatible with YOUR computer. You can't just install any old graphics card on your computer. Find out which 512 MB graphics card your computer takes and install it. It might be a Radeon.  

Answer 3

Try downloading the latest drivers for your graphics card from the NVidia website.

available here:

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.asp...

select your card and the OS

Also, make sure your computer meets atleast the minimum requirements of being able to support the card

and, I could be wrong, but the GeForce7300 might NOT support directX 9.0c, which would make it pretty useless in this case.