Unreal Tournament and the HP Pavilion a620n

• June 12, 2005
• James Skemp
• article, software

I was sceptical whether my machine, a HP Pavilion a620n, with standard specifications, could play Unreal Tournament 2004. Since I had a couple of hours to kill, late one night, I decided I would try downloading the demo, to see if it would run on my machine. I had previously downloaded the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo as well, to also see if I could get that to run, and had bought the Unreal Tournament, Game of the Year Edition, for an older computer. To make a long opening short, this guide is going to go over Unreal Tournament and the HP Pavilion a620n, with standard specifications (id est, no altercations). If you're using this computer, and would like to use one of these programs, I'm going to tell you if you can.

For those that don't have the HP Pavilion a620n, a little about the machine. It has a 3200+ AMD Athlon XP processor (which is 2.2 GHz), with 512 MB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM, and 64 MB of shared video memory (yuck). It's got a 160 GB hard drive, an 8x DVD+RW/CD-RW, along with a 48x CD-ROM. So, it's not a high-end machine, but it's certainly not quite that old yet. The machine comes standard with Windows XP SP1, which I have left on the machine (not quite ready to update to SP2 yet).

Specifications for the programs

Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition
O/S: Windows® 95/98/2000/Windows® NT 4.0/Linux/Mac
CPU: Intel Pentium™ 200MHz or AMD K6 200MHz or better processor
Memory: 32MB RAM (64MB recommended)
Available HD Space: 300MB (605 recommended)
CD-ROM Drive: 4x or faster CD-ROM or 4x or faster DVD-ROM Drive
Audio System: DirectX 7.0 Compatible Sound Card
Video System: PCI Local Bus Video Card (8M 3D accelerator recommended)

Unreal Tournament 2003
Operating System: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium® III or AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz processor or faster (1.5 GHz or faster processor recommended)
Memory: 128 MB RAM minimum (256 MB recommended)
Hard Disk Space: 3.5 GB free
CD ROM or CD/DVD ROM: 8x or faster
Sound: Windows®-compatible sound card. NVIDIA® nForce(tm) or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby® Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio
Video: Any Windows-compatible video card (NVIDIA GeForce 2 or ATI Radeon with at least 64 megs of video memory recommended)

Unreal Tournament 2004: Editors' Choice Edition (DVD)
Operating System: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium® III or AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz processor or faster (1.5 GHz or faster processor recommended)
Memory: 128 MB RAM minimum (256 MB recommended)
Hard Disk Space: 5.5 GB free
DVD-ROM Drive: 6x speed or faster
Sound: Windows®-compatible sound card. NVIDIA® nForce(tm) or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby® Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio
Video: Any Windows-compatible video card(NVIDIA GeForce 2 or ATI Radeon with at least 64 megs of video memory recommended)

What the Pavilion can play

I find it somewhat surprising that the HP Pavilion a620n can play any and all of the above games. Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, can be run on the highest detail settings with absolutely no problems at all.

I've only tested Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 on some of the fairly low settings, but I've had no real problems. Actually, the only real problem I had was with installation of UT2004. During installation a Critical Error would occur. The message is something to the effect of "Failed reading source file: [DRIVE LETTER, FOLLOWED BY SOME FILENAME] The source media may be bad. If installing from a CD, try cleaning the CD to remove any dirt." Doing a few searches, I found a forum where this error was discussed, and a solution found. DMA access is the culprit, so we'll need to turn this off for the DVD-ROM.

To do this, right click on My Computer. Next, select Properties, and click on the Hardware tab. Now, click on the Device Manager button. Here, expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers item, and double-click on the second Secondary IDE Channel item. Go to the Advanced Settings tab, change both Transfer Mode options to PIO Only, and press OK. If installation is still quitting, it's possible that you have a different IDE Channel that needs to be changed. Since a restart is not necessary, you can easily change both Secondary IDE Channel items, if you so desire.

Now, start installation from the DVD again. When installation has finished, do the above again, but change Transfer Mode to DMA if available, and press OK (close any windows that are still open, of course). Because the DVD-ROM is only 8x, installation is certainly not a quick affair, yet is certainly not a slow one either. I would recommend patching all versions of Unreal Tournament, however, so that they can be run without the CD/DVD (this is not a hack, but rather a boon of installing the official patches).

I've also not tried playing these games in Multiplayer, however, I would assume that you would have little difficulty playing this. One thing to watch for, however, is slight slowdown when screen activity is high.

The Unreal Level Editor, both 2.0 and 3.0, can be run with no problems. However, the high memory requirement for 3.0 will probably mean that you won't be doing too much else while working in this program. Yet, test playing the maps is extremely possible, and should be of no concern (I speak here of UT2004, so the other two versions should be a breeze as well - I know that UT: GOTY is from experience).

And that's that. I hope this guide is informative for those few individuals that are using the HP Pavilion a620n, and are curious whether Unreal Tournament(s) will run on their machine. I can't speak for the next version, but the ones up to today run great.