FF7 with GeForce 2: No hardware rendering?

[Myria]

I have a GeForce2 MX on my Pentium 3-1000 computer with 1024 megs of RAM.  I use Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 8.1.  When I go to FF7Config, it only lists "Software Renderer".  The game runs, but it's slow in battles from using the software renderer.

Anyone know why this happens or how to fix it?

Myria ^_^ *hugs*

[cc]

You need to install the official v1.02 patch (or at least use the v1.02 configuration utility included) to be able to use hw accelerated mode on most modern cards, which do not support 8-bit paletted textures. Also, be prepared to get all kinds of glitches when running the game under a NT-based OS (Win2K/XP), though usually these can be sorted out with some patching and fiddling around with your system.

[Aaron]

Well, "all kinds of glitches" do not necessarily happen but do sometimes in Windows 2000/XP with FF7.  I've never had any trouble (besides the Chocobo bug, which is inavoidable).

[Sukaeto]

Yeah, installing the 1.02 patch WOULD work, but judging by the fact that you need this patch, you're probably using a fairly old driver set.  If you go here, get the newest drivers and install them, you'll notice a few benefits (speed increases in all your games, FF7 should work without the patch, and there's also a bug in the older drivers where it would crash on Cloud's final limit.  The new version seems to have fixed that . . . on my machine, anyway.)

You'll also want to download and use this, it will fix the problem Aaron mentioned above (the chocobo race crash.)