Intel GMA 500 not supported?

[Grimm Runner]

I just bought a netbook class device that is reasonably well powered (Intel Atom Z550 2GHz + Intel GMA500 + 2Gb RAM) - the GMA 500 even does Full hardware video acceleration of H.264, MPEG2, VC1, and WMV9 and DVI Digital output up to 1920 x 1200 through HDMI connector. Yet despite all that, I get the "second life is unable to run because your video card drivers are out of date or unsupported" message.

Is the GMA500 too new to be supported yet? Are there any plans or expectations when it will be? Or will it never be supported due to some fundamental short coming?

Finally, is there a way to bypass that warning and at least attempt to let SL load, and then I can tweak down the video settings once I can get to them?

Any help or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks!

[Peewee Musytari]

The Intel GMA500  won`t be able to successfully run SL, however checkout this old post: http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/111/ba/361744/1.html  you may be able to get SL to open if you instal the drivers shown there, but the quality you will get will probably not make it enjoyable.

[Rolig Loon]

Some people are using netbooks and even mobile devices to access SL, but if they can get into SL the quality of their experience is pretty low.  This is a graphics-intense environment and it uses a lot of bandwidth.  So far, that means you get the best quality with a direct cable connection, a good-sized monitor, and a graphics card that exceeds LL's recommendations. 

[Grimm Runner]

I attempted this, and the install from the Utility directory said it was unsuccessful. I tried manually installing the driver from the Drivers folder, and there wasn’t any driver choices that looked like “GMA 500” and the couple I tried all caused video to fail completely.

 

I looked on Intel’s site under IEGD, and it doesn’t look like even the newest 10.4 release is supported under Windows 7.

 

If you know of how to get the install to work, I’d love to pursue this.

 

I’ll add for the other comment that I have realistic expectations, I’m not expecting laptop let alone desktop performance, all I’m hoping is a step up from the text viewer that’s out there.

 

Thanks again for the pointer, and any additional suggestions on how to get this to work.

 

[Peewee Musytari]

Aww yeah it was a longshot, sorry that didn`t work, I`ll see if I can find anything else that might help & I`ll call on the all knowing card guru, Nyll for any suggestions too

[Nyll Bergbahn]

If the driver mentioned on Niuki Lair's website, which adds Open GL support to the GMA500, doesn't work, I know of no other way to get your netbook to work with Second Life. Even if it does work, performance is likely to be very poor.

If having difficulty installing driver 10.3 in Windows 7, this is how:

Unzip the driver you downloaded. Use the free 7-Zip if you don't have any other unzipping application.

In Windows 7,  go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Device Manager.

Then click the little arrow beside 'Display adapters' on the list and double click the named [graphics card]. Press the tab 'Driver' and then 'Update Driver'.

After this you will be given two options. Choose the option 'Browse my computer for driver software' and then 'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'. Select 'Have disk' and navigate to your unzipped driver. Click Install and ignore any warnings of unsigned drivers.

You can always rollback to the previous driver if things go wrong.