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UPDATE 2: Given up; going to have to buy a new PC at this rate. Skyrim and GW2 work absolutely fine on this though, so I'm not too bothered.
UPDATE: Tried 12.1. Worse than 12.4 and 12.6

After AMD suggested that I update my Radeon HD 4800 series' driver to version 12.6, I've spent the time since it finished installing trying to clean up after it, since they decided to list the 4800 as being compatible, but it turns out that it isn't.

Since I only started looking for drivers when Shogun 2 crashed on me, I have no idea which is the most stable driver for a Radeon HD 4800 series in a machine running 32bit XP SP3. I tried 12.4, and that had much the same effect as 12.6, and as a consequence I've been forced to reinstall what I can only assume was the driver I was using before the 12.6 kerfuffle, which is from the 25th of November 2010.

If it's possible to spare me the "you should always update your drivers..." lecture, does anyone know the latest stable driver (as in, one that doesn't slow my machine down to a snail's pace and have everything constantly flicker whenever I try to open a different window) for the aforementioned card? Google seems to be letting me down at the moment.

Unfortunately ATI's drivers are crap and they always have been. Frankly, ATI doesn't know the meaning of stable. They just assume its stable if it crashes slightly less often

Though honestly, still running Windows XP, a 32 bit OS, and using a 4800 which is pretty old probably isn't helping the situation. You are due for a hardware/software overhaul.

If you're having issues with newer drivers from AMD, you should most likely revert to versions coming out either at the end of the 4xxx cycle or at the beginning of 5xxx. AMD has an unfortunate tendency to gradually drop support for older, nominally supported platforms.

I hear 11.2 works.

LordofHats wrote:Unfortunately ATI's drivers are crap and they always have been. Frankly, ATI doesn't know the meaning of stable. They just assume its stable if it crashes slightly less often

Though honestly, still running Windows XP, a 32 bit OS, and using a 4800 which is pretty old probably isn't helping the situation. You are due for a hardware/software overhaul.

Interesting comment, this has been completely opposite of my many years of system building. I have never actually experienced an issue with ATI drivers and I have been building systems with ATI cards since voodoo stopped making GPUs. It seems as though many people think like this, but it isnt actually true. There are usually many other explanations for an unstable system other than the video drivers. Perhaps the GPU is overheating while trying to load such a taxing game such as Shogun 2. 4800 series always did seem to have a heating issue.


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Avatar 720 wrote:UPDATE 2: Given up; going to have to buy a new PC at this rate. Skyrim and GW2 work absolutely fine on this though, so I'm not too bothered.
UPDATE: Tried 12.1. Worse than 12.4 and 12.6

After AMD suggested that I update my Radeon HD 4800 series' driver to version 12.6, I've spent the time since it finished installing trying to clean up after it, since they decided to list the 4800 as being compatible, but it turns out that it isn't.

Since I only started looking for drivers when Shogun 2 crashed on me, I have no idea which is the most stable driver for a Radeon HD 4800 series in a machine running 32bit XP SP3. I tried 12.4, and that had much the same effect as 12.6, and as a consequence I've been forced to reinstall what I can only assume was the driver I was using before the 12.6 kerfuffle, which is from the 25th of November 2010.

If it's possible to spare me the "you should always update your drivers..." lecture, does anyone know the latest stable driver (as in, one that doesn't slow my machine down to a snail's pace and have everything constantly flicker whenever I try to open a different window) for the aforementioned card? Google seems to be letting me down at the moment.

In response to this - My xp machine has a 4870 using the latest drivers from ATI and it is completely stable. Shogun 2 is an extremely taxing game on the GPU and the CPU...hell it is an extremely taxing game on everything. My laptop actually has a hard time running it. That being said, what are the specs on the rest of your computer? You may want to look at other solutions besides the usual "ATI sucks at making drivers" gak.

Never had a problem with ATI drivers here and i have been using them for ten years.

CPU - AMD Athlon 7850 dual-core
Motherboard - this thing: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3262#sp)
Video Card - ATI Radeon HD 4850
RAM - 4gb

No idea about the PSU and dunno anything else.

IMHO, your computer is not up to snuff to play shogun 2. That game taxes the CPU extremely hard and an athlon dual core probably cannot handle it. The same goes for the radeon. Most likely, both the CPU and GPU are overheating which is causing them to become unstable.

I played this game on my asus laptop that has a intel i7 extreme hex core, 12 gigs of ram, and a 3 gig geforce video card, and it made it overheat. This thing is liquid cooled too!

I have a 4870x2 in my xp computer with a AMD 965BE @ 3.4ghz and it will run shogun 2, but it also starts overheating and becoming unstable.

No big deal anyway; so long as it plays GW2 (which it does) I'm happy.

I'll be honest with you, Shogun 2 is a BS game. It isnt that great and certainly isnt good enough to justify the caliber of system required to run it really smoothly at good settings. My laptop cost just shy of 2000$ and it can handle the game for about 30 minutes at a time before it crashes. It took me three crashes before I realized that it isnt worth playing. If you want to play a fantasy style total war game, get one that is coded well and optimized like king arthur wargame or something.