Graphics drivers help please...

**verena xeventus** · February 16, 2009, 05:39 PM

Hi guys,

Yesterday I installed the latest graphics drivers for my ATI/AMD 4870 graphics card (version 9.1).

Now, everytime (in campaign) I fight a battle it either crashes straight away or crashes when the battle finishes. Theres no error message it just CTD straight away.

Is this a known issue, if so is there a solution?

Thanks.

**irishron** · February 17, 2009, 04:33 AM

First question would be could you fight the same battle with the same units with the old drivers?

If it's different units, the game could be the problem.

**verena xeventus** · February 17, 2009, 09:02 AM

Yep, could play the game fine with same units/factions/locations etc fine without the new drivers. as soon as new drivers are on... game crashes. Today I ununstalled 9.1 and reverted back to earlier driver and game works fine again.

Any ideas? I would hate to think that any future drivers will be incompatible.

**irishron** · February 17, 2009, 09:18 AM

There is a chance it could be a fluke on ATI's part. They do have a reporting system on their site for reporting such things. They won't know unless you tell them. In their readme that came with the download, is this game listed as one of the unresolved issues?

**verena xeventus** · February 17, 2009, 11:34 AM

Nope, read through the readme file and theres no mention of it. I will report it though, see if they can fix it. To be honest I'm not a big fan of ATI any more, beginning to regret buying this card.

Thanks for the reply irishron.

**irishron** · February 17, 2009, 12:06 PM

Maybe considered off-topic but I prefer my ATI to Nvidia, and having owned both, and I don't don't see a third maker to challenge them so we're stuck with complaints about both.

**verena xeventus** · February 17, 2009, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by irishron

Maybe considered off-topic but I prefer my ATI to Nvidia, and having owned both, and I don't don't see a third maker to challenge them so we're stuck with complaints about both.

Yeah, I think between the two of them they would just about destroy any new competitors in the market.

As for my 4870 It's not a bad card, Just not as good as I thought it was going to be. To be honest, I think I may have been ripped off with my entire system, it just doesn't cut it - especially for the price I payed for it. (£950 - without monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.)

Thanks for the replies

**PrivateJoh** · February 18, 2009, 05:43 AM

Installing the latest drivers is usually not a good idea, no matter what they tell you. Go for a slightly older version that has been fully tested and worked on.

Originally Posted by verena xeventus

To be honest, I think I may have been ripped off with my entire system, it just doesn't cut it - especially for the price I payed for it. (£950 - without monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.)

Probably your system has the potential of being very fast. You probably bought a dual or even quad core processor. The problem is that M2TW coding is old and not optimised for multi core processors. This means that you might have four cores, but each one of them is slower than a very good single or dual core, so since M2TW uses only one it actually might run slower in your new computer.

BUT, try some code that can properly deal with dual or quad core computing, THEN you will see the benefits. Haven't bothered reading about it but maybe Empire TW is one of those? I doubt it though.

**Gorrrrrn** · February 18, 2009, 11:26 AM

Had the same problem as O/P with my HD4850 and the 9.1 drivers.

installed complete package and then it wouldn't play m2tw or mods.

had to completely uninstall the drivers, the install prog everything. use driver sweeper to clean out the last vestiges and then uninstall hardware in device manager until the only thing left is the default vga driver.

then reinstalled the original drivers from the manufacturers dvd.

have updated to 8.10 but am not touching the 9.1 drivers again!

(the support forums did report a lot of people having problems with them.)

**verena xeventus** · February 18, 2009, 05:31 PM

Hi Joh and rozanov, thanks for the replies...

to Joh, about the multi core processors, I'm really hoping empire total war will utilise them properly, maybe then my computer won't seem so bad afterall.

To rozanov - Yeah I did the same thing as yourself by reverting to the 8.10 drivers which seem to be working fine at the moment (hopefully). I'm kinda glad you mentioned about the forums reporting problems with the latest drivers, maybe they will fix for the next release.

Cheers