Hi guys. I'm a newbie here (though I played BiA EiB long and hard. I've just got Hell's Highway and loaded it up no problem, but when I run it, though I get sound, I get no picture - nothing at all. I've downloaded the latest driver for my video card, but that hasn't helped. I seem to be within the spec, so don't understand. I have a Radeon X600 (256Mb of memory) and am running Windows XP (Home edition SP3) with a Pentium 4 CPU, 3.20 GHz. I have 3 Gb of RAM.

Any ideas? I tried the ubisoft customer support, but the system seems to be down, so I cannot get a message to them.

You need to do some computer upgrading, the game needs a shader 3 capable video card.

*Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: ATI RADEON X1600/1650–1950/HD 2000/3000 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800/7/8/9 series.

Sorry, yes - I read the Readme and saw the same info. It's pretty disappointing. I can at least run the game on my laptop which is less than a year old (the PC is over 3 years old), but it seems to struggle a little.

I've thought about putting a newer graphics card in, but don;t really want to have to change the PSU, etc. Is there a suitable card which will run on my Dell Dimension 5150's 305W power supply, does anyone know? I've been looking at some cards, but they all see to need more.

Sadly, as well as buying a PCI-Express video card, you'll very likely to need a new power supply as well, a 305 watt supply is very low by gaming standards.

But if you look at this link :- Graphics Power Requirements you'll see the power requirements of most cards.
In your case, you can ignore the data for multicards, as you only have one video slot.

Thanks for your help on this - it is bugging me rather. However, that link is interesting. As I READ it (but I'm prepared to make a fool of myself here), my Radeon X600 was using somewhere between 11 and 36 Watts (depending on whether I have an XT or a Pro, and I would need to check.) A Nvidia 7600GT uses up to 36W, so I would be OK, wouldn't I? Or is my ignorance of power requirements even greater than I thought?

I could easily have missed the point, here, so would appreciate any advice you can give.

Newer chips tend to have a smaller die size and use less power, but the amount of ram on the card has a slight effect on the power use, a 512mb card needs a few more watts than the same model with only 256 or 128mb.
You could probably get away with a 7600GT, but unless you're on a tight budget, it might be better to get a bigger power supply and a more powerful video card, that way, you'll be able to play longer before the games that come out force you to upgrade again.

BTOG46, many thanks for the advice and I do appreciate what you are saying as well as your time and help on this. The fact is that this is a 3 year old Dell Dimension 5150. I had originally though that I should replace the PSU as well, but am worried whether I have the technical aptitude to do the job! I'd be interested to hear what you think. To give you an idea, I've happily added extra RAM, and many years ago, fitted a tape drive (remember those?!), a CD-Rom drive, a sound card and a new Hard Drive (latter with the help of a friend.) I'm not particularly good on hardware, electricity, etc (better on software issues), so are there any potential pitfalls? Should I just keep it simple and fit a basic graphics card or is the new PSU job simple enough even for me!

To be honest, fitting a new power supply isn't all that hard, the main thing is to make note of where the various power connectors go........and the rather more obvious one of unplugging the power from the electricity socket first.
Power supplies only normally have four screws on the back of the case holding them in, but you may need to remove some other components that might block easy access, on mine, I had to remove the cooling shroud from the CPU fan as it was in the way.

One thing to make sure of, is that it will fit the case, some Dells used non standard cases, so check with your supplier that it will fit the case.
Also, some Dell cases may have pins in the top of the case that slide into slots on the original power supply. To use a compatible power supply, the pins must either be removed or bent out of the path of the substitute unit

Many thanks for the advice - I'm leaning towards trying the 'proper job' (ie, new PSU and decent graphics card.) I'll give it serious thought. Right now I have too much on in my life to even play the game, so there's no great hurry, I guess!

Thanks again - much appreciated.

BTOG46 - or anyone who cares to answer,

I realise I went quiet for a while. I managed to get the game to 'kind of' run on my laptop - but it crashes with monotonous regularity, so I've given in. I'm going to take the plunge and upgrade my PC. I figure a 600W power supply - perhaps an OCZ StealthXStream (I've been doing my research) - but not sure about the graphics card. I don't play that many games - things like BiA and also IL2. So, I don;t want to go mad - figure about £100 as a budget for the card. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Oh yes: I'd like to keep the job as technically simple as possible! My PC is:

Dell Dimension 5150 (about 4 years old and currently with a 305W PSU)
3.2 GHz P4
3.0 Gb RAM

Thanks. (From what I saw of the game on my laptop, it looks great, by the way!)