How to get Civ 4 working on ATI cards

[Grawl]

Do you get some error when loading the game regarding the DirectX version? Read on. This is for ATI card owners, but if you have a Nvidia card, read on - by all means.

1. Get version 5.10 from the official ATI site (www.ati.com). Only the drivers are needed, but grab what you need.
2. Install SP2 for Windows XP, if you haven't.
3. Install the DirectX from the CD/DVD.

Voila. I was to arrogant to install SP2 before, but it seems to solve the problem for this game.

 

[Brianboy_24]

I have SP 2 on for win XP corp and cat. 5.10 drives but it's not working

 

[talshiarr]

Hopefully that will fix it for some, but for a lot of us apparently our problems are way beyond that. I've done everything but re-install XP (which I refuse to do just for a game) and nothing's working here.

 

[Iolum]

Glad to know it fixed your errors. Wont help me though, already have sp2 and latest drivers. I also tried using 3 older drivers, 5.7 to 5.10, no effect.

 

[freeop]

Hopefully that will fix it for some, but for a lot of us apparently our problems are way beyond that. I've done everything but re-install XP (which I refuse to do just for a game) and nothing's working here.

Have to agree with you Talshiarr. I have jumped through hoops and done everything that everyone has suggested and still have the "Error Initializing Renderer". I had SP2 already installed, had DirectX 9.0c already installed, and allowed the install disk to install DirectX 9.0c again. Updated the drivers, uninstalled the drivers to older ones and came back to the latest ATI drivers, and still have the same problem

And like you said, I am not going to reinstall WindowsXP for a game. I beleive that there is just too many people that are having the same problem that it just an isolated case. There must be over 200 people on the other thread that are having this problem the day after release. That is just too many people to be a fluke. Wait until everyone else gets the game and all have an ATI card.

Hopefully some one will come up with a solution. At least I hope so...

 

[rs1990]

Mine is now working. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB) card and when I first installed it, I couldn't see the into video, the menu buttons, and it kept dropping to the desktop randomly. Here is what I did:

just a recap of what i said in the other thread, in case it might help diagnose the problem:

1. I installed DX 9 and Civ 4 from the disc and tried running. Didn't work, got the symptoms above.

2. I uninstalled my existing ATI drivers and then I updated my driver to 5.10 and tried running again. Still didn't work...it would just drop back to the desktop.

3. I then updated DX off the disc again after updating my driver. After doing this, it worked perfectly. I played for a few hours last night with no probs.

Hope that this works for some others at least as the game is awesome. Good luck.

-Rick

 

[ingvild]

It's workning fine on my laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 now.

1. I uninstalled the ATI control panel (control panel / add & remove programs)

2. installed the latest omegadrivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/

3. (I also installed the directx from the civ4 dvd prior to this, so you might need to do that aswell)

After this it works perfectly. No problems whatsoever after 15 hours of play

 

[adarel]

I really think it's a problem with DirectX not installing correctly. I've seen people have success with directX 8.1 as well as numerous problems with the directX installer on the civ4 disk. Dammit, I wish I was at home so I could try it out myself!