Member Avatar for spidey

Hello,

I installed 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance' game on my PC. Every function and graphics display well except for the characters, mine and the villains alike. They seem to look like silhouettes or stick men with weapons. I asked someone else about it and he said the problem could be in my video card. Either it is not compatible with the game or doesn't have Effects Accelerator in it. I have no idea about this Effects Accelerator thing.

The game's minimum system requirement are as follows:
- Pentium 4 2.0 GHz
- Hard Drive Space: 8000 MB
- DVD-ROM: 8X DVD-ROM
- RAM: 512 MB RAM
- Video Memory: 128 MB VRAM

My PC has:

- Pentium D Dual Core 3.0 GHz
- Hard Disk Space: I got 200+ GB free space
- LG GSA-H54N 18x DVD ReWriter
- RAM - 1 GB RAM
- Video Memory: Built-in 256 MB VRAM from ASUS P5B-MX/WiFi-AP Motherboard

I'm planning to by a 512 video card with effects accelerator but I'm not sure if this would solve the problem. I might spend money for nothing.
I would appreciate your help on this matter.
Thank you in advance.

  • 4 Contributors
  • 6 Replies
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  • 6 Years Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by arthurmanuel.emanex

Dani AI

Generated

Most likely cause: the characters rendered as silhouettes indicate the game’s shader/lighting pipeline isn’t available or the 3D driver is failing. As observed, integrated-on‑motherboard video often lacks the dedicated hardware and driver support required for in‑game pixel/vertex shaders; ’s advice to run a requirements/test tool was on point — Windows’ own dxdiag gives quick proof of whether Direct3D acceleration and the installed driver are working.

Practical diagnostic and repair steps:

  1. Run dxdiag and check the Display tab for Direct3D/DirectDraw acceleration, driver name and date.
  2. Update the graphics driver from the GPU vendor (or Apple for Mac hardware) and install the DirectX runtime the game ships with.
  3. Try lowering or disabling advanced effects in the game (shadows, pixel shaders, HDR) to see if character geometry returns.
  4. Test another 3D application or demo to confirm it’s a GPU/driver problem rather than the game data.
  5. If using virtualization (VMWare, Parallels, Wine), note that many virtual environments do not expose full hardware shaders — native Boot Camp or a native Mac port is required for full 3D support.

Hardware notes and cautions: adding a discrete PCIe card with dedicated video memory usually fixes shader-related artifacts, but compatibility checks are essential — verify slot type, PSU capacity, driver support for the OS, and physical clearance. As later reported, switching to a discrete GPU resolved the issue; for Mac cases like ’s, confirm whether a native Mac build exists or run Windows natively with the correct drivers for reliable 3D rendering.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for Serunson

Please try this program:
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest
you will require an internet connection to do the test and the program will check your PC and tell you if you can or cannot run a game. And it will show you what you have failed on and by how much.

Member Avatar for spidey

Thanks a lot! This really helps.
Have a nice day.

Member Avatar for Serunson

No worries, it's what we are here for :)

Member Avatar for jbennet

Video Memory: Built-in 256 MB VRAM from ASUS P5B-MX/WiFi-AP Motherboard

Thats the problem. Video built into the motherboard is crappy - in reality its something like a 2mb video chip and steals the rest of the memory from the system ram and steals CPU time from your main CPU whereas an add-in card has its own fast dedicated memory and CPU.

Member Avatar for spidey

I just bought a video card yesterday. It took me some time to buy because picking the right one is not easy. I have to consider the features and price. What I bought is Sparkle Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB. The characters are displaying properly now. Problem solved. I hope I chose a good one and won't have other problems with it.
Thanks for all your help! God bless.

Member Avatar for arthurmanuel.emanex

i also have the same problem on my macbook, i have installed MUA fully but the character graphic is the only problem, the background and everything else is good.

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