Don't upgrade to Catalyst 1.5

[mgdpublic]

I was able to play fine until mid-game when the game got bogged down. I decided to update my drivers to Catalyst 5.1 for the Radeon 9700 Pro and the game took 12 minutes to load and then was painfully slow (5 minutes for a fricking diplomacy screen). Rolled back my drivers and I'm back to where I was. I had a driver dated 5/12/04. 6.12 or .14.

[BleckLord]

I must respectfully disagree with you. ATI users who are experiencing game problems should update their drivers. One of the first things official/forum tech support is going to ask you is, "do you have the latest drivers for your hardware?"

check it out:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141473

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_ati.htm

Also remember that there is a lot more hardware in your system than just a video card. You should go through and see that all your devices have current drivers/updates/firmware. Flashing your bios is straight forward, but don't do it if you're not comfortable with it.