Latest ATI Drivers

[kell_the_kyuss]

Howdy,

I'm fairly sure this is a gfx thing.

Happens only on BTS.

Screen blacks out sometimes, usually after a turn is about to start. I can reboot and reload and play some more. But it happens 4-5 times a game and its annoying me greatly.

Heat issues are in normal range.

So I imagine its the drivers.

WinXP
x700 pro (256 type)
756 ddr2
2800++ Sempron
Asus K8U-X

 

[kell_the_kyuss]

Tried the most recent drivers from amd-ati's site.

Blue screen half the time on boot up. Black screen every turn on BTS.

Tempted to uninstall BTS for a month or so till they get this worked out.

I have come to hate video driver hassles through the years.

 

[blazer-glory]

Mine only crashes when I update patch Civ IV

 

[blazer-glory]

I think this is pretty much unplayable if you have an ATI card, its constantly crashing

 

[solitair]

Hey all I could really use some assistance here. I have the following:
Pentium 4
2.8ghz
1 gig ram
ATI 9800 Pro agp video card
Windows XP Pro
Direct X 10 (and same thing happens with 9c)
I have Civ 4 and Civ 4 Beyond the Sword.

While playing Beyond the Sword my game crashes. It usually happens around 1400s to 1700s and ONLY when a diplomacy screen pops up. The message box comes up, it hangs/freezes for just a sec, and then it kills the signal from my pc to my moniter and my moniter registers no signal. The sound keeps hanging on a single note. Control, Alt, Delete does NOTHING. I have to hold the reset button on the PC and restart.

Odd thing is if I use drivers dating back to 2003 this problem doesn't replicate 100% of the time. However what does happen is this: in combat the side that wins loses all their figures in the unit and winning side doesn't. However once the fight is resolved the game corrects it.

If I download the 7-27-07 most recent drivers the hang up on the diplomacy screen happens 100% of the time.

I've noticed a similar problem happens with Galactic Civ 2, but using 2005 drivers, its fine. So I'm prompted to believe its my videocard. I've reformatted my pc last night to see if it might be the OS.

There are a couple of other things I want to try before getting a new videocard, but I was hoping someone might have some insight/suggestions or insights or having the same problem. I'm fairly tech savey but no where near most of you. Any assistance, advice, or insight would be VERY appreciated.

David

 

[elefante]

Hello,

it seems i am having a ATI problem as well =(
i am getting random crashes (unable to pinpoint any common theme during the crash), most of the time the game suddenly blacks out, and then a 'VPU Recover has reset your graphics....etc' message appears. sometimes, it totally hangs (or probably i couldnt wait for it to slowly get back to the desktop) and i can only power off it.

comp specs -
Motherboard: MSI915P Neo2 Platinum
CPU: Intel P4, 3.0GHz
RAM: 512MB (2x256 DDR2-400 (200MHz))
Graphics: Radeon X300/X500 Series (128MB, PCIe), driver version: 8.380.0.0
DirectX: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

i am quite sure my comp has exceeded the recommended requirements, afterall this is a 2 year ago game and my PC is considered quite the norm of today's standard (i think?). i may not have the updated drivers as of today, but i think most of the required ones are up to date enough (i mean, at least its not a 1year old version)

another point to add, i have lowered all the graphics settings to the minimum (both game and from Catalyst) and it still happens. suprisingly, i am able to play Granado Espada, a relatively recent 3D intense mmo game.

is it really that ATI cards have this problem? im sure there are a bunch of ATI users who can play the game without any problem. why do ATI users always face problems ?!=(( or can anyone tell me what else is there to try, other than buying a new card?

Thanks...

troubled ATI user

 

[blazer-glory]

I worked out why mine was crashing and it maybe the same reason yours is. It turned out my video card was too dusty and was overheating. Open your pc and and take the card out. My card had a plastic cover over the fan. I removed that and then brushed all the dust from the fan.

 

[elefante]

hello

i hav solved my problem: i blew a fan directly into the PC with the casing off. the GPU is most likely over heated during game play. i wonder if ATI cards seem to have problems with heat? cos this is how i play granado espada too, with the fan blowing into the PC, i just dint think that a 2 yer old game wld require the same treatment.

for those who find it tedious, u can consider buying an extra GPU fan.. perhaps i should too.. then afterwards when its time to change, i will swear off ATI cards =/

 

[ThWolf]

Hello

I would like to know what are the latest ATI drivers, but which are suitable with BTS. The reason I'm asking this is becuase I saw on the forums that the latest ATI drivers are not always the best for Civ4, so I didn't want to download an ATI driver and screw up the game for me.

Thank you

 

[Waterman]

Trying to re-install Warlords, but the install process says the ATI Catalyst Control Center must installed. So, I click yes (even though I can see it in my system try). I try 'modify" and after the whole process is done, thinking I can proceed w loading game, it says same thing. Tried repair to no effect and then uninstall/reinstall - same effect... Getting really tired of this... I've tried everything I know of... Please help!! (Attached copy of control ctr wi some details of my PC)

 

[desemondez]

Hi I'm currently using a Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro , and I have the gigabyte drivers installed on my card.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10006067

Is it recommended that I attempt to install ATI Radeoon HD 2400 Pro drivers from the official AMD/ATI site in the event that the gigabyte site doesn't update their ATI drivers?

Also will there be any difference in the drivers from both sites?

 

[dalamb]

I worked out why mine was crashing and it maybe the same reason yours is. It turned out my video card was too dusty and was overheating. Open your pc and and take the card out. My card had a plastic cover over the fan. I removed that and then brushed all the dust from the fan.

I was having screen-blank-out (no signal from the PC to the monitor), plus when it wasn't blank, my 3D games (Civ IV and Children of the Nile) got weird flashes all over the screen. Upgrading to the most recent drivers didn't help; reading the above message did! Blowing the dust out cleared up the problem nicely. I was too timid to remove the card, but just blowing out the dust with the card in place seems to have worked.

 

[Rooseville]

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, and I got the blank screen on loading when I was using the latest, official ATI drivers. I uninstalled those drivers and installed the drivers from (gulp) Windows update. That solved my problems.

 

[drugrep]

Working on a friends computer who plays Warlords. I updated ATI drivers to newest 8.1 driver (Jan 2008) and game would not load. Screen would come up black and after about a minute, a error popped up which I forgot to write down. Told me to check driver, settings, direct X I think.

Had to roll back to 6.14.10.6462 (Mar 2004) and it loads fine now. His card is a 9600 Series Radeon.

 

[vaigglesfan]

Working on a friends computer who plays Warlords. I updated ATI drivers to newest 8.1 driver (Jan 2008) and game would not load. Screen would come up black and after about a minute, a error popped up which I forgot to write down. Told me to check driver, settings, direct X I think.

Had to roll back to 6.14.10.6462 (Mar 2004) and it loads fine now. His card is a 9600 Series Radeon.

I think I may be having a similiar problem but I'm not sure.

Yesterday BtS was working fine but today it isn't. Only known change to the system was a Windows Update this morning.

When I try to start of the BtS I end up getting the following message:

Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, Latest Graphics Drivers and GRaphics Settings Parameters:
-width = 1024
-height = 768
-flags = 0xc
-hwnd = 0x80062
-adaptrid = 0
-deviceid = 1

Error:

There is no error data listed. I have an ATI 9600 Pro (SEC) with the following version information: 8.421-070928a-053250C-ATI. I'm not sure if that changed this morning or not. Unfortunately, I'm not real savvy on the inner workings of these little devil boxes so I'm not sure whatelse to look for or what to attempt.

 

[drugrep]

You need to roll back the driver to previous version. Go to control panel, then system, the hardware tab, then device manager, then display adapters, right click on your vid card name, select driver, then roll back driver.

I think I may be having a similiar problem but I'm not sure.

Yesterday BtS was working fine but today it isn't. Only known change to the system was a Windows Update this morning.

When I try to start of the BtS I end up getting the following message:



There is no error data listed. I have an ATI 9600 Pro (SEC) with the following version information: 8.421-070928a-053250C-ATI. I'm not sure if that changed this morning or not. Unfortunately, I'm not real savvy on the inner workings of these little devil boxes so I'm not sure whatelse to look for or what to attempt.

 

[MaxMonty]

I recently got the same error message, following a WinXP update:

Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, Latest Graphics Drivers and GRaphics Settings Parameters:
-width = 1024
-height = 768
-flags = 0xc
-hwnd = 0x80062
-adaptrid = 0
-deviceid = 1

Have gotten that msg before, and my solution was to roll back my ATI driver (as suggested above).

System specs:
3200+ AMD Athlon 64
ABIT UL8 motherboard
1 GB RAM
ATI 9600 (All In Wonder), so 325MHz with 128MB SDRAM (AGP)
new addition! SAMSUNG SyncMaster 226cw - beautiful!

However...while the system works great as is, the sole exception is Civ4 (+Warlords), which requires the lowest graphics settings at 1680x1050.All the kool kidz are using PCIe; I can't, and further, don't want the hassle involved in upgrading motherboards and/or CPUs.

So basically I'm thinking of replacing my current AGP card with a GeForce 5200 FX (specs are 250MHz with 256 DDR) that's never been used, but am leaning towards buying a GeForce 7800 GT (+VisionTek TV Wonder 650 for video captures) and scrapping my ATI card altogether. I doubt the tradeoff between speed for more memory would result in much greater performance of Civ4 play.

Any thoughts? I'm sick and tired of dealing with ATI issues per Civ4.

 

[blizzrd]

I have been having ATI issues for a long time, but recently found a solution to my troubles.

I have ATI Radeon 2400 driver. When playing BTS RFC, I had no issues during the early eras but always entered problems towards the industrial/modern era. I would get "failed to allocated enough memory" and dumped back out of the program or sometimes simply watch my computer reboot. Very annoying, it would be happening almost every second turn after reloading.

I firstly tried going to the ATI website and downloading the most up-to-date driver and Catalyst Control Center. This didn't alleviate any of my problems, still crashing every second turn or so.

Then I went into the civ.ini file and looked through the settings. I made a change to turn on the "MemMaker" setting and hey presto! No more crashes for me.

I've been happily playing the rest of my BTS RFC game ever since, and Russia is just about to complete the Apollo Program for the UHV win.

 

[ZeroM]

I have a radeon x300 Card, been using the original drivers that came when I bought the machine, no issues. Today I updated to the most recent OMEGA drivers. Now when I start the game I get flickering and the picture rolls. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[WaterMoon]

Reading Blizzrd's post above I thought I'd found the answer. Just like him I was gettting the "failed to allocate enough memory" message and the program would crash. So, seeing his solution was simply to go into civ.ini and change the setting for MemMaker seemed just the ticket. However, when I got home I searched the civ.ini file high and low and did not see the word MemMaker anywhere. Did it use to be there but got changed by one of the patches?

I did find the following two items that might relate to this problem.

Allows some memory savings ***ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION***
MemSaver = 0

Break on memory allocation order #
BreakOnAlloc = -1

Would changing either of these address the memory problem?
If so, what would the setting be changed to?