sapphire radeon 9200 atlantis

[ggfdm]

i installed civ4 so many times im gonna crazy.
after playing some turns the game and the pc crash and i have to reboot it by reset button. sometimes the monitor becomes black and i can hear gamesounds in background but need to reboot it as well.
i installed civ4 patch 5.12, latest ati drivers and so on but still have the same prob.
dunno what else to do
pls help me

thx
ggfdm

[Zydor]

The 9200 series cards are low end cards for the game, and whilst they will - usually - run, it will only do so if you pay close attention to 'housekeeping' on the PC. You need to reduce the load on the card as much as possible.

Follow through on the information in the link below - and its links. However you do not have the AGP problem - ignore that part. You may find the older graphics driver set listed near the end of the thread (V4.12) may suit your current card better as its an older one, rather than the latest setr you loaded - only trial and error will confirm that

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=154317

That Motherboard has an AGP slot - I would strongly advise a card upgrade to a mid range card to prevent long term grief.

Regards
Zy

[ggfdm]

Thx Zydor.

I've tried the advices u gave me and the ones on the links. I installed the card drivers as told,
at first Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.97a (Catalyst 4.12), but it was impossible to play cause the game graphics was so poor i couldnt see anythg
then Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.83 (Catalyst 5.11) and as the graphics was good, i success to play some more turns, more than ever, but finally the pc crashed as well.

What else to do? really i'm very mad at radeon. Im thinking about buying a new video card, any advice? dont wanna spend much if possible, about 100 euros...
someone suggested me Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MB, but still a radeon and i am not sure to give extra money to them anymore.

Thx a lot

ggfdm

[ggfdm]

sorry, here my new dxdiag

[Zydor]

Dont blame Radeon, its an older card based on a design a few years old - does fine in other environments, but was never built to cope with full blown 3D games - no matter what a commision based Salesman, or Marketing based Flyer sheet tells you.

9600 is a good mid range card, should do you well.

On the NVidia side the 6600gt is an excellent card. NVidia recently added a couple of gizmos to it and dropped the price to below $99, a bargin, its a very good card (but make sure you get an integral fan on the card not passive cooling - some resellers are using passive cooling thats a bad idea on a 6600gt going full ahead on a 3D game.

Also be careful on the Bus for the card. You have an AGP board, not PCI-e, you need to make sure you get an AGP version of the card - be careful you dont buy a PCI-e based card in error. You should go for 128Mb minimum on card RAM, try for 256Mb if the dosh will go that far - the latter not really needed for most games at the moment, but the way things are going re design of games - it would not surprise me to find 256Mb on card memory becoming the norm on a 12-24 month view.

Get independent view from supplier or manufacturer on whether or not the card you want to get will work on your Motherboard, and that it will not cause heating issues. The latter is new to many CivFans who have not really been in the 3D game world before (true 3D ), and their cards have never been pushed to the limit on a constant basis. A true 3D game (which Civ IV is) will place a lot of work on the card, which can also put the Power Supply Unit under pressure. The end result of the latter can be an automatic reduction in frequency the card operates at to try and reduce load, therefore causing game performance issues. As always treat the whole machine dont look at it in isolation.

So pay close attention to not only the Make and model of card, but also the size of the Power Supply Unit, its Bus(PCI-e or AGP), and the resultant total increased heat output of your beastie inside the case.

Regards
Zy