Shadow Issues (PICS)

Greetings,
I am currently having issues regarding the shadows in NTW.
At one angle the shadows will be nice and defined then when
I rotate the camera the shadows become all pixelated and blocky.
When I rotate the camera back to it's original position the shadows are defined once again.
The same thing occures on the campaign map except
you cant rotate the camera on the campaign so its permenately pixelated.
whats the deal? Any feedback, information, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

ALL MY DRIVERS ARE UP TO DATE.
and my laptop blows this game away on ultra settings so I KNOW that my machine can handle it.
I have also tried decreasing the settings to high and med with no success which makes me think
that this might be an ATI thing.

SPECS:
ASUS G73JH Laptop
Core i7-720QM processor (1.6GHz/2.8GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB L3 cache)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 graphics card
6GB RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
ATI Catalyst Version 10.12

Campaign View

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Battle Map 1st Angle

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Battle Map 2nd Angle

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Are you using the CCC? If yes, what settings do you have on that?

yes and it they go as follows.

Smooth Vision HD Anti-Aliasing: 8x samples with box filter
Catalyst A.I.: disabled
mipmap detail: High Quality
Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies.
Anti-Aliasing Mode: Super-Sample AA
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
OpenGL Settings Triple Buffering: Disabled.

any ideas? anybody?

I have found that checking the in-game AA and AF settings work much better for NTW...those external controls in CCC for NTW cause wonky results. I would disable the external AA and AF. Since you aren't cross-fired, for that matter, try the game with CCC off and see if the results are any different.

the only option available that would be closest to "disabling" AA and AF would be "use application settings" but when i do that the framerate is absolutely destroyed, like 4 frames per second. lol. and when i close out all CCC processes and applications there is no difference in game at all.

im not crossfired? the specs for this card says that it is "crossfireX ready".

No, you're not crossfired and you maybe better off with 10.5 drivers.

OK, since your rig seems to be good enough to be able to apply some goodies, there must be another cause for your frame-rate being destroyed.

1) have you disabled that extra audio HD device that every driver update likes to stick on?
2) 10.12 is not the most up-to-date driver...11.1 is out.
3) what is your process for updating drivers? specifically, how are you cleaning out the old ones?
4) In-game, do you have Hardware Shadows enabled, and what quality level are shadows set at?

Your AA "supersample" mode is brutal on fps btw. And IMHO, unless you are running very small armies, 8xAA is way too much for your system and your cpu is likely bottlenecking.

Nanny

Something not brought up is the heat generated by your settings inside your case. Check your temps lately?

oh i can most definately assure you that it is not the heat that is the problem. the ASUS G73 comes with two fans inside the case that directs all heat from bottom to the back. even the built-in overclocking feature cant raise the temperature in this thing because of those fans. on top of that i also have the laptop propped up on a cooling pad with an additional fan. its ice cold baby lol.

1. forgot about that audio device disable. just did it.
2. dont know why the hell it didnt pick up the update. downloading now.
3. yes hardware shadows is selected and actually helps a little. without it the shadows look like final fantasy 7.
4. the framerate only dives if i REDUCE the super sampling. game runs like sh.t on low settings (bizarre). game runs great on highest settings (CCC) and ultra settings (NTW). the shadows are the only problem.

ill report back about the 1. and 2.

first off, it was a pain in my ass to install ccc 11.1 and the drivers. but here is my problem now. the new graphics driver make it so that in battle there is no land its all ocean. and when i zoom up on the units they turn invisible. and when i roll back to previous driver all my 3d options in ccc disappear. cant edit 3d settings with previous driver? wtf ati?

My experience is that the "ocean" problem occurs when you haven't thoroughly cleaned out all the old drivers. Try this method:

1. uninstall all ATI related software, including drivers
2. use driversweeper to remove traces of ATI software
3. performed a safe-mode reboot
4. used cCleaner, analysed and fixed/deleted all registry irregularities.
5. perform a SECOND registry analysis, and to get the left-overs, fix/delete all irregularities
6. reboot normally
7. install driver of your choice
8. disable the ATI HD sound device in device manager

didnt work. its still nothing but ocean.

i get the feeling that im stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime here. it does seem though that the game runs quite a bit smoother with the new ccc though. still get the crap shadows and the blocky pixelated howitzer explosion though.

nevermind. ccc keep crashing with previous (working) driver.

After going through the driver changes, have you deleted the scripsts folder and verfy your game cache?

They do not automatically update.

no go. still water.

but all my other games still work fine. its just napoleon now thats ed

Remember what i said about 10.5 drivers? Does this make a case for it?

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ll=1#post88496

Have you filled out http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3 about this?

unfortunately i think that might be the case. in device manager/display adapter my previous driver said HD 5870 but this new driver says HD 5xxx series which makes me think that it is not nesessarily compatible with my exact card or something. it works but just not for napoleon. its weird. i guess im just going to have to put up with the shadow problem until something shakes loose and sombody can come up with a solution. thanks for all the suggestions guys. this is what makes the TWC place for total war fans like me. thanks for the links by the way.

just figured it out! the ATI installer's default install location was in a folder called ATI Technologies in program files but windows 7 64-bit has two program files, program files and program files (x86). when i changed the default install location to (x86) it worked like a charm! but that still doesnt solve my shadow issues. lol there still there noooooooooooo!