Empire: Total War - Random total freeze in bootcamp - help!

[Ambient7]

I just bought the game and it works fine for a random amount of time but then does a total machine freeze. The only way to clear the freeze is to do a restart - argh!

I can play the game at high settings without even a hint of slow down in performance (I haven't tried higher yet) however, the freeze happens less often (especially in the battles) when the settings are almost all on "Low".

Has anyone else had this problem? Any solution for it?

My machine is just a few weeks old and bootcamp was installed about a week ago so all the drivers should be up to date. It just doesn't make sense . My specs:

iMac 2.93 Intel Core 2 Duo
4 Meg of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB

By the way, the game looks beautiful on the high settings and it is fun... when it works...

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[Beric]

Have you checked the temperatures of your system during these times? I have an iMac that just gets too hot, even though its graphics power is more than enough.

 

[happydudeca]

It's not you, it's the game.

Check out some Empire Total War forums and you'll see the plethora of problems including crash to desktop (CTD) when selecting naval units that seriously screwed up my invasion of North America.

 

[Ambient7]

ATI 4850 cards - seems to be the main problem cause

Good thought, I haven't checked the temperature as yet, though to the touch is seems to be at a "normal" heat level. Will look into that.

On the desktops forum in MacRumors, for those of you having similar problems you will see a hot thread on this issue, not just when people play games but even doing simple low demand type functions such as surfing the web or even just having the computer sitting in idle. Worth checking out.

For Empire Total War - The game itself does run fairly smoothly otherwise, it seems that many people who have been posting problems complain about CTDs, not total system freezes (which is happening with the Macs using the ATI 4850 graphic cards).

So, looks like there are issues with the game but the major issues for now are with the Mac's ATI Radeon card...

 

[FoxHoundADAM]

I just bought the game and it works fine for a random amount of time but then does a total machine freeze. The only way to clear the freeze is to do a restart - argh!

I can play the game at high settings without even a hint of slow down in performance (I haven't tried higher yet) however, the freeze happens less often (especially in the battles) when the settings are almost all on "Low".

Has anyone else had this problem? Any solution for it?

My machine is just a few weeks old and bootcamp was installed about a week ago so all the drivers should be up to date. It just doesn't make sense . My specs:

iMac 2.93 Intel Core 2 Duo
4 Meg of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB

By the way, the game looks beautiful on the high settings and it is fun... when it works...

Thanks for any help in advance.

Your problem may be with the ATI 4850 card. Freezing issues with this configuration are VERY widespread, even when not gaming. See the iMac forum for the 3 or 4 threads on the subject.

 

[Alexis1537]

I can play the game at high settings without even a hint of slow down in performance (I haven't tried higher yet) however, the freeze happens less often (especially in the battles) when the settings are almost all on "Low".

Has anyone else had this problem? Any solution for it?

My machine is just a few weeks old and bootcamp was installed about a week ago so all the drivers should be up to date. It just doesn't make sense .

By the way, the game looks beautiful on the high settings and it is fun... when it works...

Remember that many ETW users are having an absolute nightmare and it doesn't have anything to do with their specific set ups. The game was rushed and poorly QA tested. They released a patch on 29th April (or the 30th, can't remember) and it doesn't appear to have cured most of the major immediate stability complaints (i.e. frequent crashed to desktop etc.).

Stay tuned and go onto their support forum to follow the action:

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/forums/126

Thanks,
Alex

 

[happydudeca]

There was another recent update, try it again.