Running Need For Speed Series on Onboard graphics

Well there ain't be anyone who haven't atleast played a single game of the adrenaline pumping NFS series. With a GMA 950 and a Windows XP PC, noone gets farther than NFS Most Wanted. Here are some tricks to run The complete series released till date.

You Need :
A Decent Processor with GMA950 graphics (The 945 motherboard) and atleast 1Gb RAM
Windows Vista 32-bit Operating System
Drivers for 965 chipset(detailed below)

Starting from one, get a PC with Vista. I myself thought that XP was the best for gaming as it was lighter on resources and was sturdier than Vista. But benchmarks and tests proved me wrong that Vista was a born gamer OS. Games which don't run on xp run on Vista with the same onboard hardware due to the difference in graphics rendering architecture. I modded my XP to make it look cooler than Vista and I suceeded. With 2Gb 667MhZ DDR2 RAM, 3.2GHz overclocked P4 HT Processor and a basic Nvidia 8400GS, I could run all the eyecandy like transparancy and window transistions but nothing was so smooth as if it was not meant for it. Even video players utilizing Open GL flickers the transparent part of windows a lot. But when I boot into Vista, everything is smooth as it should be. If your PC meets the requirements to run Vista, its the smoothest OS ever but not as much as Windows 7. But surely Vista is the best for gaming. You won't enjoy switching to Vista at first but soon it will be a pleasure.

Next download X3100 graphics drivers for Vista HERE. These drivers are for the 965 motherboard, but we are gonna use it for 945. They are not the latest drivers, still are the only ones tested in this mod. After you learn the trick, you can test them on any version. With this mod, you get -

A great boost in FPS in most games
Support for almost all games
A better performance chipset
Newer Open GL support

Now trying to install these drivers will give a error message as to not meeting the minimum software requirements. So we have to mod the driver file which list the device ID's onto which this drier will install and replace it with our device ID, the GMA950's. I have only tested it on GMA 950 and with version 15.11.1.1545 and on Vista. I also have a GMA900 but dont have the time to swap motherboards for a test.

First we need our GMA 950's device ID. Make sure you have a 945 chipset by downoading GPU-z HERE and running it. The name should show "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950". Then you are safe to proceed. Though all GMA950's are the same, the chipset on which they are deployed will be different giving them a different device ID. To find the device ID of your device, Run 'devmgmt.msc' and expand the "Display Adapters" in Device Manager. There will be something like Intel(R) 82945G.... depending on the chipset type.Double click on it to open its properties. Take the details tab and select
"Matching device ID". Now note the last four characters from the column below. It will be something like 'pci\ven_8086&dev_2XXX starting with 2.Its is your GMA950's hardware ID. Close everything.

Now Run the downloaded drivers and it will extract either to where you give it to or to a temporary folder. Copy that folder and keep it safe and exit the setup. Now in that folder, open another folder named Graphics\ and there will be a file named Igdlh.inf. Open it in notepad. At about the 65th line under [Intel.Mfd], there will be a line -

%iBWGC0% = i965G0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2XXX

Replace the last four digits with your device ID

Example %iBWGC0% = i965G0, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2772

Make sure you are modifying the line %iBWGC0%.

This will lead to the display of "Intel(R) G965 Express Chipset Family" in the device manager and display properties after you install it. To avoid it, goto the end of the same file and spot

iBWGC0 = "Intel(R) G965 Express Chipset Family" and replace it with

iBWGC0 = "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950" or anything you like.

Save amd exit notepad.

Now from Add or Remove programs, uninstall your current driver and restart PC. Skipping this step will definitely give you a Blue screen Of death (BSOD). Now Install the modded drivers and restart.

To run any particular game with the features of the X3100, it needs to be registered in the registry first.

Copy paste the following in notepad and save it with .reg extension. Edit the "~game.exe" with your games name. The (~) Tilda sign is necessary.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"~game.exe"=dword:00000001

For NFS Carbon And Undercover, it would be

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"~NFSC.exe"=dword:00000001
"~nfs.exe"=dword:00000001

Run it to register the game.

Now for running games released after Most Wanted, you have to set the compatibility mode of each game NFS game to Windows 98 by right clicking on its executable.

I could run all NFS games except Undercover wich would just play the sound with a white screen. Maybe SP or 2 for Vista would fix this. Swiftshader is the only solution for that.

GTA San Andreas is very fast at minimum settings with this modded driver and with Vista SP1.Before Installing SP1 San Andreas had a lot of character overlays and bugs for me.
Call Of Duty 2 Works at minimum settings and is playable.

Hope this helps.