New Video Card Fixed My Woes

Magnus Maximus

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 1, 2005
Messages
15
Location
The Timbers of Fennario
I was getting the "cheshire cat" and "black map".
I had the original ATI 7000 series video card that came with my Dell system.
I upgraded to an ATI Radeon 9250 (about $100 at Best Buy) and everything looks like it's working now!
Good luck!

__________________________________
"Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right!"
 
I hate to say it -- especially since I started with what should have been a sufficient (minimum requirements) card.

I also bought more RAM -- although, just to experiement, I tried both with and without the additional RAM.

I upgraded to an overclocked (BFG Tech) GeForce 6200/256 meg card. Was formerly running a GeForce3 Ti 200/64 meg. System was originally 1.7 ghtz P4, 512 RDRAM, moved to 768 RDRAM (both sizes though, seemed to show little difference in performance) running Windows XP SP2. I actually briefly tried an ATI 9000 pro, but didn't have the install disk for drivers and had to return it (it ran ok on lowest graphic settings).

Using the 81.85 Nvidia driver (most recent one) -- actually, so far as I can tell, with both cards.

Haven't given it a real workout yet (only got just into AD), but so far, crash free and no graphic issues (fingers crossed), even the movies are getting through, though sometimes quality seems to drag.

Strangely enough - though no longer hear any music or other sound fx besides birds, waves lapping, etc.

Before the new card, was freezing up before I could get to turn 2. All manners of graphic problems -- tried all settings, tried messing with the card settings, you name it.

I really do believe it's a matter of the minimum and even recommended cards being insufficient to handle all the requests the display/animation is throwing at it. I'm no expert - but I believe if the card has insufficient memory to perform as an app requests, it asks the regular pc RAM for help (which, I'm guessing is probably a lot less efficient about such requests). I'd be willing to bet this is when the memory leaks really started to kick in, and memory usage started spiking until the game crashed. I'm not claiming to know nearly enough to say anything more than that those seem like solid suspicions.

I suppose I'm lucky - the RAM was somewhat planned for a while, and you can never have too much -- the gfx card was an expense I hadn't planned on... and I'm a bit peeved that Friaxis/Take2 didn't do a better job laying down better minimal and recommended requirements on the cards, but there it is.

I spent the last 4 days ENORMOUSLY frustrated with this game... haven't decided yet whether the game itself has won me back over to a happy customer.

Sooo.... FWIW - if you're using and older graphic card, and can afford to squeeze in a new one, I think there's a good shot your problems will be solved. I'm not DEFENDING having to purchase a new card to run a game with faulty requirements.... just saying it worked for me.
 
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