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

[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.