Officially playing Half-Life 2 and Valve’s Source-engine utilizing games on Intel 945GM chipset is impossible due to Auto/Quick Save bug that crashes the game. There’s no known solution for this issue in Intel’s software compatibility database.
This page is intended to provide a workaround for those who really want to run Source-games even though the performance is not even near the best available.
I got this workaround as a comment for blog entry describing this issue.
When you are on Steam, go to “My games” tab and right click on desired Source-game, which in my case was Half-Life 2. Select properties, then there’s this button labeled “Set launch options”, click it and write in following parameter: +mat_forcehardwaresync 0. Click OK and close the properties-window. You should be now able to play the game without the fear of any crash related to Auto/Quick saving.
The original comment added also -window parameter, which would run the game in a window, but for me it did work even without it.
Finding decent graphics settings is whole another problem and is not described in my blog.
Edit: I’m really impressed how much traffic this page has got so far… Thank You For Helping Me to Help You to Help Us All.
Edit 2: It seems that some people have been sending comments in Russian. Those comments were tagged as spam by the blogging software and were not published. I found them by chance while checking the “Spam Purgatory”. I translated them on Google Translate to see whether they were anything decent. They seemed so and I accepted them here. Please, write comments in English so the software publishes them automatically and won’t treat them like mere spam.
Edit 3: Policy change: Comments only in English.
Saturday 24. February, 2007 at 01:12
Cheers mate worked a treat but the performance is gay as hell
Monday 26. February, 2007 at 14:10
^^ Intel 945GM is probably not meant to be used in gaming in the first place… just a guess, though.
Lowering DirecX level makes game perform a little better, but the graphics *will* be ugly(/even uglier)
For DirectX 7 use “-dxlevel 70″.
Friday 4. May, 2007 at 21:35
does +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 itself cause performance degeneration, or is performance just bad no matter what?
as for getting more comments, just make sure you write about really super-specific stuff like half-life2+945gm, which is information hard to come by elsewhere – I found you thru google
Friday 4. May, 2007 at 22:18
Actually a friend of mine told that +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 improves performance, but I haven’t had enough interest to test it personally. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong (supposing that that lucky one has found this unlucky blog).
For example playing SimCity 4 is also quite an experience (and Half-Life 2 and SimCity 4 really are similar: in both you can ruin a city), so the performance is just bad.
Of course, integrated graphics chips rarely provide excellent gaming experience with “quite recent” games. 945GM probably is a lot better with Half-Life 1 (not the Source one).
As for googling: What doesn’t exists in Google, doesn’t exists (or is really hard to find).
Sunday 6. May, 2007 at 23:27
Aside from mat_forcehardwaresync 0, you might also want to use these settings as well:
mat_bumpmap 0
mat_specular 0
Either add them to the command line prefixed by + as instructed with the mat_forcehardwaresync above, or create autoexec.cfg into your cfg folder and add those lines there without the + mark.
Should improve the perfomance a great deal.
Monday 15. October, 2007 at 09:56
You rock man!!! when i found the intel page [http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel945gm/sb/CS-022051.htm] saying no official fix is there, my heart really sank. Cos i ve waited long to play half life 2 and i thought i couldnt do it just cos of the chipset. But nice blog man.. keep blogging…
Wednesday 17. October, 2007 at 19:00
Hi! I’m thrilled this little blog exists as I am in the same boat. I have a Dell XPS M1210 (which was touted as a gaming laptop, I might add angrily) with the intel 945gm chipset. However, I tried adding the launch property you suggested above but with little success. In both Half-Life 2 and Portal I still get the auto save crash. What is doubly strange is that I doesn’t matter if I gimp the graphics to practically nothing or if i run them at pretty high levels. Still crashes at the auto save point.
I was also wondering if you’ve discovered any tweaks for this chipset to run Team Fortress 2.
Anyway thanks for any help and for existing
Wednesday 17. October, 2007 at 23:35
(This comment may sound a bit unpleasant and mean, but at the moment I’m very tired, it has been a long day…)
Sorry to hear that the trick had little success, I haven’t even tried to play the game for a while as I can play on a computer with a real graphics accelerator (some NVIDIA 6600 I think it is…). I love good looking graphics and my poor laptop with this “notorious” chipset doesn’t provide them…
I don’t believe that Portal would work on 945GM very well as it’s laggy on my desktop computer (not so new, btw) so I don’t have any real intentions to get it working on the laptop. Sorry.
(But.. I CAN confirm that the first Half-Life just works, but no one is interested in that, I believe (PS. I run it on WINE in Ubuntu))
Thursday 18. October, 2007 at 00:30
[...] Intel 945GM chipset and Half-Life 2 [...]
Tuesday 20. November, 2007 at 01:03
in case anyone is still trying to run the Orange Box, I now have all the games (well except Ep2 but i expect that to come together shortly) up and running. Check details here:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=623213&highlight=945gm
Sunday 25. November, 2007 at 02:01
That’s a hard one… I think your best bet is trying to get a new graphics card. If that doesn’t work try getting a new DirectX.
Wednesday 12. December, 2007 at 10:58
Original poster is a godsend, thank you for making this available!
Friday 21. December, 2007 at 02:07
stephonodiono
I probably should have mentioned that this a laptop, if I haven’t said it before, so getting a new graphics card is out of question. And as another note: suggesting getting a new graphics card as a solution to problem on other card is a very very bad suggestion.
(an extreme example)
How would you feel if you had a problem with your brand new (expensive, which 945GM is not) ATI graphics card and people tell you to get NVIDIA instead? Not very happy?
And getting a new directX… I suppose gamers update it frequently and it seems that dx9 is the last version for windows xp, so there shouldn’t be any problem on this regard.
I wrote this article thinking about laptop users. If someone does have a “normal” computer with this same integrated graphics card, I’d suggest them to get a new graphics card too… It is an ugly workaround, but I trust that the readers do what they feel is right.
(I’m sorry if someone finds this comment harsh or otherwise unpleasant. It wasn’t my main goal)
Sunday 6. January, 2008 at 16:22
here is the solution: you have to force directx 10.
http://htcgroup.org/?p=434
Friday 25. January, 2008 at 23:44
To get way better frame rates, go to my website http://www.intelintegratedgaming.blogspot.com and scroll down to the 945gm + Source engine games article, and I’ve got these and a couple more tweaks listed, plus reccomended settings for seperate resolutions, and the different settings required for Ep 2, Portal and TF2. really useful!
Friday 4. April, 2008 at 22:48
Wow thanks I was gutted when the demo crashed Not anymore and it’s not too bad either I might stick in some more Ram and try and optimize it further
Tuesday 8. April, 2008 at 02:56
Thank you so much for this fix! I spent hours looking through Steam documentation, trying various things because I had no clue what was crashing HL2 (and Portal wouldn’t even load). I also had an ongoing support ticket with Steam Tech Support, who after several attempts, we’re unable to solve my problem. I gave up figuring there was no solution. Then, I realized several months later that I never even bothered to ask our dear friend Google for the solution, and here I am:-)
By the way, if anybody never caught my hint above, this same fix works with Portal crashing right before the menu screen.
thanks again!
Saturday 26. April, 2008 at 20:03
The only thing that wont work on intel 945 is episode two..
all others work
Friday 2. May, 2008 at 14:07
Genius – worked sraight off (well so far anyway)
Monday 5. May, 2008 at 03:42
I’m trying to run Portal on a 945GM chipset.
I’ve tried all of the suggested tricks and nothing works with Portal. I get the game started with a few of them, but then it crashes as soon as I go through the first portal. Nothing I’ve tried helps–any solutions?
Tuesday 6. May, 2008 at 20:03
Well, I have HL2, TF2 and others working for me on my 945GM, with autosave, on full textures, models and shading. for HL2 I have [-dxlevel 81 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0], but -dxlevel 90 will work too. For TF2 I have my own custom autoexec (you can grab it from me by asking at markroantree@gmail.com) and my launch options are -dxlevel 90 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0
Monday 12. May, 2008 at 22:05
Nice blog, thought everything was okay till my game stopped running and it stated that my driver had stopped responding or something.
Happens whenever a part in a game gets too complicated to run for my system (not very technical)
Saturday 18. October, 2008 at 20:54
Anyone tried to run HF2-EPISODE1 on MSI Wind/Advent 4211 (intel 945 express) with really smooth frame rate ?
Tuesday 10. March, 2009 at 21:05
I FOUND THE PERFECT SOLUTION! Go to your “my games” tab and right click your HL2 game and select properties. then go to set launch options. type in ” -dxlevel 90 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 -autoconfig ” with spaces included. IT WORKS ON HL2, HL2 E1, and HL2 E2.
Wednesday 13. May, 2009 at 00:52
Alan’s solution above (http://bigbrother1987.wordpress.com/intel-945gm-chipset-and-half-life-2/#comment-709) worked fine for me (OS: MS Vista). I used “-dxlevel 100″ in the Launch properties section in order to force HL2 to pick up Direct X 10.
Tuesday 19. May, 2009 at 21:55
Довольно занятная статья. Внес Ваш блог в закладки.
Monday 25. May, 2009 at 22:59
I’ve been working on a good command line for Portal & the Intel chip for a while and this is my improved version:-
-applaunch 400 -steam -dxlevel 81 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority +mat_softwarelighting 1 +mat_reducefillrate 1 +mat_bumpmap 0 + mat_specular 0 +mat_picmip 2 +mat_max_worldmesh_vertices 1024 +map_background none -autoconfig
Monday 25. May, 2009 at 23:26
it seems this may be even better and add a better chance of longer functionality (yep, i managed to find more commands in under 30 mins):-
-applaunch 400 -steam -dxlevel 81 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +mat_antialias 0 + mat_disable_bloom 1 +mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority +mat_softwarelighting 1 +mat_reducefillrate 1 +mat_bumpmap 0 + mat_specular 0 +mat_picmip 2 +mat_max_worldmesh_vertices 1024 +map_background none -heapsize 1024000 +datacachesize 128 -autoconfig
-nosound (can be added if it turns out the glados audio is one of the things making the game crash)
Sunday 12. July, 2009 at 02:53
This one works perfectly for me. I found it on youtube:
1.) Check to make sure you have Steam and your Half-life games installed. (Should already be)
2.) Now go to your “My games” tab on Steam.
3.) Right click any Half-life 2 game, Portal, or Team Fortress 2 game. You can also choose any Mods.
4.) After you right clicked on the game, go to “Properties”
5.) Go to “Set Launch Options…”
6.) Paste in this ” +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 -dxlevel 90″ (INCLUDE THE SPACE AT THE BEGINING!)
I found it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RVKwM2fWN8. If you have any questions, comment on that guys video.
Monday 27. July, 2009 at 16:16
It doesnt work with Team Fortress 2.
It crash again…
Saturday 5. September, 2009 at 23:28
Thank you so much! I searched so many different forums and support sites and nothing helped until I found this one! It works like a charm! I can now play Half-Life 2 no problem! I was wondering if you had another code that would allow me to play Portal on the same Chipset.