I can't tell if all these crashes i have are with EB or graphics card problems...

[Dayve]

The Radeon HD 4800 series are plagued with problems, a simple google search will tell you that. Anybody who has one, regrets buying it, nobody more than myself.

Thing is, i only play one other game, mount and blade. It does crash from time to time, but not as often as EB does. It's got to a point now where i'm scared of fighting a battle that might take me more than 10 or 15 minutes, because when i spend 30 minutes fighting a battle, or worse, an hour or more in the case of large siege battles, only to get a CTD when the battle is over, it's so, so frustrating.

I'm running RTW 1.5, legal copy store bought, EB 1.2 on top, sprite fix and mod pack.

I generally don't get any CTD's for the first 10 years, when i say generally i mean maybe i'll get one tops once every 6 or 7 battles, but a lot of the time i don't get any at all. Once i hit around 260BC it becomes unbearable. This is why i start a new campaign every day but never finish it.

The first type i get is a complete system lock up. This only ever happens when i fight a battle in a large (12,000 pop) or huge (24,000 pop) city, and if the battle goes on for more than say 30 minutes, the system will lock up and the only way to fix it is to turn it off at the power. I can avoid this one by simply not fighting battles in huge or large cities, i auto-win (as long as i know i definitely will win) and then disband which units i think i would have lost in the battle afterwards.

The second and the worst type is any battle i fight. I'd say 1 out of every 5 battles i fight will result in a CTD. It doesn't matter how big or small the battle is, i had one today where i fought 3 units of levy hoplites with a general and 2 units of skirmishers and it ended in a CTD. The CTD is NEVER at the start or during a battle, it is ALWAYS after the battle has ended, when you click the button on the battle results window to go back to the campaign map. The loading bar will fill up, then i'll be hit with my desktop losing all the unsaved data, including the battle i just fought.

Like i say, it's getting to be now where i'm scared of fighting battles, crossing my fingers and toes before clicking on the button to end the battle, hoping and praying to all 3,000 known gods that it takes my back to the campaign map and not my desktop. It's unbearable.

I have no conflicting mods installed, only the sprite fix and the mod pack, and the official fixes in Bovi's sig. It can't be the mod pack causing this either, because i only installed that recently and this was happening long before.

[bovi]

I don't think it's your graphics card causing all of this, although it may cause some of it, at least the lockups when fighting battles. Have you checked the Windows event log for any information the OS may have logged about crashes in the drivers? Back when I had a crappy Nvidia card, I had to use drivers that were over a year old for any Direct3D game to work at all, and then it ran... Well, sluggish would be too nice a word. You could try various driver versions and see how they work.

That crash when loading the campaign map after a battle though happens to many others too, so I don't think this is the display card screwing up. I have no idea how to fix this, beyond what is listed in the frequent issues that is, but you knew those already. If anyone knows what we could have screwed up for that to occur, please post.

[Skullheadhq]

aww i feel sorry for you! This is so dramatic.Unable to play Eb for more then 1 hour.
Have a cookie

PS:Buy a new computer

[Dayve]

Thanks for that arrogant and obnoxious reply, Skullhead. It earned you a spot on my ignore list, you carebear.

Bovi, i have that problem with this card. When i bought it 4 or 5 months ago it was pretty much the best card on the market at the time, it cost me around 250 pounds, which would be around $500. It's not a cheap old raggedy obselete card, it's just plagued with technical problems.

There aren't very many driver updates for it. There is a hotfix, which was hurredly made to address the tirade of complaints that people were making about the card, but it didn't do much good. I tried it, but it actually made the card worse, if that's even possible.

The other drivers just don't do a thing, i have a sneaky suspicion ATI just released blank installer files to make it look like they were doing something, but seriously they do nothing whatsoever.

Oh well, i'll just have to save up for a new card i suppose. Although i'll never buy an ATI card again as long as i live.

[iamphet]

All drivers for new video cards are buggy regardless their vendor. I'm afraid you will need to wait extra 6 months at least. If I wanted to play EB right away I would buy a mid-range video card released 1-1.5 years ago.

[Berg-i-dum]

There is a trick which can solve your after battle CTDs, just wait some minutes -or until the music stop- before press the command to continue to campaign map. This solved all my CTDs!. It sounds like a joke but it worked for me, and a lot of guys i have read here. When the battles have more than 2000 units it is possible to have the error -at least for me-, so better be patient hehe. The other CTDs during battle sounds like overheating...

I only had one unsolved CTD in a siege where i got it in the middle of the battle. I have had other bigger and longer battles than this and no problems, so it seems like a random CTD.

[hoom]

I have no significant problems with my 4870.
Can't say I have really heard of any either?
They do run fairly hot though & while the card itself is designed to run that hot, a crash 30mins into a battle might be due to nearby devices in the case getting too hot.
Do you get similar issues with playing other graphically intensive games?

I definitely get the after battle crashes too. Typically after about every 5-6 battles but sometimes out of cycle after big battles too.

I thought it might have been something to do with system stability but I don't have similar issues with other games so I tried playing another old mod that I used to play, Rome:Total Realism 6 PE for a bit to see if this generated the same sort of problems & I can play this all day long without crashes. (& the average battle in RTR has more soldiers than the average EB battle due to generally larger unit sizes eg Hoplites are 240 on huge size vs EBs 160)
RTR 6 doesn't use a script like EB so I tried the RTR 7 The Iberian Campaign which does use a script & like with RTR 6 PE, its rock solid stable.
So its not an ATI/RTW engine issue.
I think its something specific to the EB script. Something that gets triggered about every 5-6 battles and/or by big battles.

I was hoping EB1.2 would have somehow fixed this but it hasn't so no EB for me until I see some people saying its been fixed.
Its just not playable to CTD every 5th or so battle.

[Tudhaliya]

Thank god someone else is having this happen two. I'm going crazy with these CTDs every 5th battle. For me it seems to happen when I am laying siege to a city, then a relief force comes in and attacks my army, and then I defeat the relief force and defenders. It might be something to do with the game having trouble both retreating the relief force and killing off the garrison at the same time right after the battle. I hope a fix is coming.

[Dayve]

Thank god someone else is having this happen two. I'm going crazy with these CTDs every 5th battle. For me it seems to happen when I am laying siege to a city, then a relief force comes in and attacks my army, and then I defeat the relief force and defenders. It might be something to do with the game having trouble both retreating the relief force and killing off the garrison at the same time right after the battle. I hope a fix is coming.

I have actually found that waiting before you click the button after the battle is over it reduces the number of crashes you have. I didn't think it would make a difference but it really does. I played for almost 6 hours non-stop yesterday, fought quite a few battles, and when the battle was over and it gives you the choice of viewing battle statistics or continuing on to the campaign map, just wait 30 seconds before clicking the button to go back to the campaign map.

[Tellos Athenaios]

@Iamphet: that's not true for the 'simple' new versions -- i.e. those where it's basically the older version with some design flaws fixed or given some more memory just for the sake of making the thing more competitive price/value wise...

@Dayve I've experienced similar behaviour (not just with RTW with other programs ending for no good reason as well) with a different machine (which I assembled recently, and which will replace the one I posted the specs of earlier). It went away after I updated my Windows Vista (pity you have the by now no longer supported XP) + tried overriding my GFX card settings in the CCC program ATI ships for controlling/configuring its drivers. The funny thing was that the only changes I could make to the settings essentially meant forcibly use high settings for the cases a program wanted to use low settings.

I should note that the card never would run very hot as sits right beside a 900mm (case-side) fan, now it does run a bit more hot. You may want to check if your GPU already runs very hot before you try this, but if you find it runs at odd low temperatures (the 48xx are apparently known as true central heaters) you should try.

EDIT: And now I can replicate the feats of stability of the old machine in the hardware specs thread too.
EDIT2: Driver version 8.530.0.0

[Berg-i-dum]

I have actually found that waiting before you click the button after the battle is over it reduces the number of crashes you have. I didn't think it would make a difference but it really does. I played for almost 6 hours non-stop yesterday, fought quite a few battles, and when the battle was over and it gives you the choice of viewing battle statistics or continuing on to the campaign map, just wait 30 seconds before clicking the button to go back to the campaign map.

Yeah it works.

I have noticed also that it is recommendable to wait some seconds before a battle, in consecutive IA-turn assaults, or you can get CTDs while loading next battle after a previous epic one.

[hoom]

In my experience the waiting thing only seems to lessen the issue rather than fix it.

That said, I play with music turned off so to some extent it may be that I'm not waiting long enough? (& I don't understand how this could be related to music with music disabled)
I'm an avid reader of combat specs so I always spend a fair bit of time on the battle stats screen anyway.

[LordCurlyton]

Yeah i was having similar battle problems at times but I have found that waiting does really work for most of it. Also, I partially blame the SLI mode I'm running in, but at least the board keeps some space between the cards. From what I can tell my cards stay relatively cool which I know reduces my CTDs, especially compared to my old computer. There is of course the good old RTW memory leak issue which is a constant of the game. Given enough time it'll even begin to eat through the 6 GB of RAM I have (we're talking the greater portion of a day but it will happen), at which point a CTD is inevitable.
If loading times aren't too bad (under a couple minutes, preferably under a minute), I'd recommend the wait after battles + take a break every 3-4 hours to minimize the risk of CTDs.