
AMD X2 4200+
XP Professional (32 bit)
1024Kb RAM
~200GB SATA Hard disk space left
Directx 9.0c
XFX Nvidia 7800 GT
The machine booted and worked first time and has not had any serious problems (other than this).
I have upgraded my BIOS, Nforce4 chipset, and graphics card driver (85.98) to the latest releases and have updated RTW to v1.5 (via v1.3) I do not have BI.
The problems started initially after prolongued play. Prior to the RTW updates I experienced some 'crashes to the desktop' which after the patch updates has been replaced with something far stranger.
The first hour of play is always perfect, with very smooth visuals. When I have been playing for 1-2 hours the visuals start to stutter, in both the strategic and tactical environments. It is noticeable in the world map as the small trader caravans skip forward every half second along the roads and the tides follow suit. Within the battelfield rotation of the camera and troop movement and animation skips forward at repeated intervals, of the same nature as those found in the world map.
The only way to remedie this problem is to exit RTW and to reboot the machine (Restarting RTW does not alter things). I am unsure whether a complete crash would occur eventually as the stuttering on the screen is bearable for minutes before I reboot. I have tried running the game at a variety of settings from very high to very low (the setup should handle the highest settings don't you think?) and this doesn't seem to help.
Does this sound like a hardware or software issue? I have ran a free version of 3Dmark05 and recieved a score of 7112. But i'm unsure if this is lower than expected or not?
Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated as this game is so good I dream about it..... sad