Well i tried the patch , and i deleted video cfg file and still it will not run but in software mode on my radeon hd 6950 2gb card , i'm using cataylst 13.1 which i use on several xp radeon builds , all my 1gb and under have no issue being recognized and run in proper hardware mode , is there a fix for 2gb cards on windows xp ?

Old versions of DDrawCompat?

to sum up the issue ive tested about 6 video cards in all , all 6 are radeon hd 5000,6000,and even 7000 and have 512mb to 2 gb of ddr5 memory each , the 512 and 1gb cards hd 6570-6850-6870 -5870 and 7770 all run the game in proper hardware mode flawlessly with no issues with cataylst 13.1 . The only cards, and i have 2 systems almost indentically configured , with the issue of only playing software mode only are both of my hd 6950 2gb radeon card system with the same 13.1 catalyst driver , ive tried catalyst 12.4, 12.1, 13.1 and found 13.1 to be the most universally compatible driver regarding key features and age of game versatility and stableness for all the listed cards tested. all cards were tested also with windows xp service pack 3 with unofficial service pack 4 installed .

Matt087 wrote on 2025-02-19, 00:51:

to sum up the issue ive tested about 6 video cards in all , all 6 are radeon hd 5000,6000,and even 7000 and have 512mb to 2 gb of ddr5 memory each , the 512 and 1gb cards hd 6570-6850-6870 -5870 and 7770 all run the game in proper hardware mode flawlessly with no issues with cataylst 13.1 . The only cards, and i have 2 systems almost indentically configured , with the issue of only playing software mode only are both of my hd 6950 2gb radeon card system with the same 13.1 catalyst driver , ive tried catalyst 12.4, 12.1, 13.1 and found 13.1 to be the most universally compatible driver regarding key features and age of game versatility and stableness for all the listed cards tested. all cards were tested also with windows xp service pack 3 with unofficial service pack 4 installed .

The issue with this case could be related with Amd cards or any nvidia card that has more than 2gb of vram running in Windows xp, if thats the case maybe try to open the video config file and see what configuration you see, maybe you have to modify the config file to make the game recognize larger pages of video ram to ben able to detect the card you have. This is almost the same behaviour while running Quake 4 in Windows XP, if you run in with a GPU with more than 2GB it wont recognize all that memory snd game will only play at very very low textures and settings, modifying the config file fixes the issue. I dont know maybe give it a shot.

To be honest I have played this game using only my Windows 98 build, never tried on Windows xp using a card with a lot of vram before but i can try it on my windows xp build because i have a gtx 980ti on it so i will see if it behaves the same using my card of maybe is just an AMD card issue.

I will post here one of these days my results maybe can be some kind of help for you.

that would be interesting , i forgot to mention i am testing these cards with a variety of systems from a core 2 quad q6700 being the oldest to a xeon e3 1220 v3 haswell quad core being the newest

The reason for HW mode not appearing is too much video RAM. Limit it to something like 128MB or lesser. Technique works on my GTX 1050Ti and an RX 480

Matt087 wrote on 2025-02-26, 00:41:

that would be interesting , i forgot to mention i am testing these cards with a variety of systems from a core 2 quad q6700 being the oldest to a xeon e3 1220 v3 haswell quad core being the newest

Ok sorry for the late post, but as my test the game actually works with my gpu that I have( 980ti) and according to windows xp it has 4gb pf vram available, so the game detects my gpu and also I did not erase the video.cfg file.

Heres is the link so you can see with your own eyes:

https://imgur.com/a/DRlwYIM

Probably It could be a issue just with AMD cards, if you need the video.cfg file I can share it with you so you can compare it with yours. Anyway I hope this is somewhat useful for you.