No graphics card needed

[webkilla]

I don't know if this was ever intended...

but after a lovely Error 43 that will likely see my GTx 670 go into the trash - I have no working graphics card in my rig right now, well, none that my win10 is recognizing. its running on generic drivers.

No 3D graphics program will run - be it Warframe, or Minecraft....


But Factorio runs just fine. Factorio runs without a graphics card basically.


I love this game

[DaveMcW]

I suspect you are using Intel HD Graphics, a built-in graphics card on your CPU. Factorio does not need much from a graphics card, but it does need 512MB VRAM.

[svish]

Sure you don't have an integrated one on your motherboard? Pretty sure a Windows (or any modern graphical OS for that matter) can't run without one...

[impetus maximus]

might want to check your bios. there should be an option to default to integraded, or PCI graphics.

[CheesyMilk]

I'll look into my crystal ball and I see...I see...that you have an APU, A I5 or I7 Intel Haswell.

[Deadly-Bagel]

There's no 3D rendering so compared to other games it's fairly light on GPU. You still need something half decent as a few thousand entities zipping about (belts, bots, inserters, assembler animations, etc) does take some processing but it's not too bad.

[aober93]

This is nothing out of the ordinary. Graphics can be integrated on the motherboard, on the CPU / APU, or discrete. Many if not all games run without a discrete graphics card, sure they may not all be as powerful but they can even support dx12.
You sure need to plug your monitor into something. And this something is a graphics adapter.

[OdinYggd]

Most CPUs these days contain an IGP as part of the processor, which is sufficient to run most games that aren't graphically intensive.

Should be able to run Minecraft as well, I've run it on quite a few IGP based machines without issue.

[ChoMar]

Pretty sure a Windows (or any modern graphical OS for that matter) can't run without one...

No User-PC can run without Graphics Card. Because its what drives the Monitor. A Headless Server (Thats whats in Datacenters) or basically your modern Router, thats a Computer without a Graphics Card.
What we have here is something with limited to no 3D Capabilities. Since the Drivers are not installed, its probably (almost) none.
But Factorio isnt a 3D-Game, so thats no Issue. The Stuff lying around is mostly processed by the CPU, so all thats needed is some VRam to display the Stuff and, depending on how its drawn, a little bit of GPU to move the stuff. Minecraft on the other hand, as bad as it looks without mods, is a 3D-Game. In the earlier days, when we had 3dfx accelerator cards, it was possible (albeit bad) to do 3D in software. I dont know if thats still down.
This would be different if Factorio would use the GPU to calculate stuff, but thats not done (and i dont know if it makes sence, I dont know enough about MIMD Programming).

[gavin]

Look at here

[impetus maximus]

No User-PC can run without Graphics Card.

GPU would be a more proper term. my graphics card died and i have no card in my machine at the moment. i'm using the on-board GPU of my processor.
if i turn smoke off, Factorio runs really well on Intel 3000 graphics. kudos devs.

[Matthias_Wlkp]

I'm able to run Factorio on an old 2007 Dell Precision M6300 laptop with NVIDIA Quadro® FX 1600M 256MB and it runs OK-ish. Not great, but playable. I never played it longer than a couple of hours on business trips, so I can't say how the end game would feel (probably not too great), but if the question is - if it runs - the answer is yes, sort of.

[Kayanor]

Well some months ago the graphic card of my laptop died.
The funny thing about this: Since the devs changed the graphics behavior to automatically run on a GPU I always needed to tell the computer to NOT run factorio on the graphic card but on the iGPU.
This makes factorio one of the three games I can still play, even without"external" graphic card.

[roothorick]

Factorio uses Allegro for rendering (among other things), which is unique in that it can fall back on doing all the graphics rendering internally; all it needs then is a surface to paint on. I'm mildly surprised that it still has that ability after all these years...

PS: It's pretty common for Windows to just fail to find the correct drivers for a device. Look up your CPU and figure out what onboard/ondie graphics you have, then get the drivers directly from Intel/AMD. That'll get Minceraft running at least.

[impetus maximus]

tip for Intel graphics users (perhaps others) with wide displays. if you right click on the intel icon in the system tray, go into the graphics properties, advanced mode, display, custom resolutions. keep your height size, but change the width so it's height x 4 divided by 3. i changed my aspect ratio from 16:9 (1920x1080 60Hz) to 4:3 1440x1080 60Hz. go to general setting, select the custom resolution, select scaling 'Maintain Aspect Ratio', hit apply. if your screen stays blank don't panic just wait and it will return to the previous working resolution.

images are not blurry since pixels are 1:1, and my FPS are much higher in deep forests. which is nice since changing texture compression, and sprite size had no affect.