Well it has to be the drivers then - which blows me away. Shogun Total War ran perfect with this settings. Gold Edition with patches and such can't handle new drivers?

I have 6.14 and that was the only way to get M2TW to work without a meltdown on my laptop. Do you know of a driver swapping method? I have to have to choose between one or the other to play.

As for the hardware acceleration - The driver acceleration is found as the same place both for Windows and the Drivers - Right click desktop > Advanced > Troubleshoot. I changed it from there.

I have played with the individual OpenGL and Direct3D acceleration using ATi Tools as well- no change.

Thanks for replying btw.