Vista - UT2004 and DX9C

I have Unreal Tournament 2004 on my Toshiba Satellite. When I installed it, it installed the version of DirectX that came on the CD (I believe DirectX 9.0 b or so). When I play the game, even if I disable or shut down other programs like my Avast Antivirus, webcam software, Winamp, etc., the game will still freeze for a split second. Some days are better than others, where the game will run smoothly and then other days, I pray not to run into a system crash.

So my question is, should I install DirectX 9 c on my Vista machine, or will this conflict with Vista's DirectX 10? If I should install 9 c, do I need to remove 9 b first? Is there anything else I can do to get UT2004 to run more smoothly? This machine should be able to handle the game quite smoothly with its 2 GB RAM and GeForce 8700M GT graphics.

Thank you.

Hi OmegaWolf,

Vista comes with and uses both DX9 and DX10 and you cant remove either version, Laptops are also notoriously bad for gaming performance...I can only advise checking for the latest graphics driver from the laptop manufacturer and downloading the Latest DirectX Update which will update both DirectX versions

Steven

Updating vid drivers has done nothing for my gaming performance in the past with this machine.

I figured that since UT2004 is such an old game, a brand new laptop with dedicated video should be able to handle it easily. This laptop handles my Bejeweled 2 easily and that's a much newer game.

I will install the updated DX that you linked to tomorrow and see if it makes a difference.

Your laptop can undoubtedly run UT2004, probably with maximum quality settings. Definitely apply the update dmex suggests.

If that doesn't work, come back with more details about the crashes. Does the game stutter? Does the frame rate drop? Does it crash entirely? Does Windows go with it, or does the game just die? Do you get any specific error? Anything like that could be useful.