Mobile Video Cards and *NEW* Drivers.

[MikeReed]

This *may* help those of you with lap-tops who are having issues getting Civ IV to run.

ATI and Nvidia do not offer reference drivers for their mobile cards and you must get any updates from the manufacturer of your laptop. This, however, is problematic as most manufacturers (such as DELL) do not update their drivers for long.

For example, Dell hasn't updated the video drivers for my Inspiron 8200 with a Radeon 9000 in 2 years. That sucks.

On Firaxis's support page it says you must have the v5.10 ATI Catalyst drivers. I believe many of you with lap-tops are using the lastest drivers from your manufacturer, which can actually be quite old.

To work-around this you need some "hacked" reference drivers.
These drivers are edited so that they will install on laptops with mobility cards and are pretty much the only way to consistently get the newest versions.

In my experience, speed & stability has only IMPROVED with these drivers.

One very good place to get them is from Omega Drivers:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Omega offers drivers for both ATI and Nvidia.

*If you are worried about stability issues with using these, simply keep a copy of the manufacturer's drivers around and install those if trouble arises.

Good luck and happy Civ-ing!

[jpsx]

These aren't working for me. (Dell Inspiron 8200/ Radeon Mobility 9000). I get an error/ video card not found message when I try to run the Catalyst 5.10a Omega drivers install. Is there a workaround for this?

[Kristian95]

I installed those drivers for my ATI 7500 card in my SONY VAIO grx5p.... the drivers work, but it did _not_ solve any of the problems (black map, no leader heads)

[jpsx]

These aren't working for me. (Dell Inspiron 8200/ Radeon Mobility 9000). I get an error/ video card not found message when I try to run the Catalyst 5.10a Omega drivers install. Is there a workaround for this?

[MikeReed]

Kristian95: It won't clear up any specific bugs in Civ 4, but some people out there may be using really old drivers, like us Dell users. I first had to get these because Deus Ex: Invisible War would not run without newer drivers than what dell had posted.

jpsx: We have the SAME laptop and video card and it does install for me...

So, here's a few possibilities:
Reboot, disable virus/adaware/spybot/security software, then try it.

If that doesn't work try going to control panel, uninstalling your old drivers, then run the omega install.

Maybe installing the Dell A03 drivers and then bumping up to omega will work?

[Kristian95]

MikeReed: Ok I just wanted to chip in with my experiences Btw, I also contacted Firaxis through their feedbackt thing on their website.... and got an automated reply from the webmaster I hope it is actually being sent to the proper people as the message claims!!

EDIT: Fast response from Firaxis Dshirk from firaxis mailed me a few minutes ago (less than an hour after I sent my feedback to them) and requested the log of my dxdiag so I sent that to him. I also made sure they are aware of all that is going on at this forum and CivFanatics regarding these map and leaderhead issues.... now I just hope that I've been helping bring a solution (patch ??) to us :P