Emperor Locking Up: AMD Duron

[maartena]

:-/

Hi All.

I recently purchased Emperor: Battle for Dune. However, I experience strange lockups, in the middle of gameplay. It will just totally freeze, and all I can do is restart the computer.

Now I have heard that there are some problems with the VIA Chipset, Soundblaster Live! and AMD CPU's.

This is my config:

ABIT KT7 MB with 800 Mhz Duron, not overclocked. Runs on latest available BIOS.

Soundblaster Live!, runs on latest drivers from Creative

Windows 2000, Service Pack 2, Latest Windows Update Files.

Hercules 3DProphet II MX (Geforce 2 MX) with the latest NVidia drivers (v21.81)

VIA v1.33 drivers (latest stable)

Emperor: Battle for Dune has got the latest patch that is available.

The thing is, I have not stability problems at all with this system. Games like Red Alert 2, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Settlers 3, Settlers 4, and Half-Life run without any problem at all. Windows 2000 runs very stable, and runs days without rebooting.

In fact, Emperor: Battle for Dune is the very first lockup problem I experience since I installed my system in November 2000, so it MUST be a combination of Emperor, and maybe some of my hardware/software. I just can't figure out what!

I spend a full night updating virtually every hardware component to the latest drivers, upgraded the BIOS, and lowered all graphical detail to low, and 640x480. I also disabled the hardware options in the advanced graphics options.

The spooky thing is that everything works picture-perfect, exept Emperor.

Can anyone here shed some light on this? I'm getting desperate.....

[riper]

Spooky? What a word for something that should be called f*cked up. Disable the soundblaster and enable an emulated soundblaster while playing the game.

Riper

[maartena]

Spooky? What a word for something that should be called f*cked up. Disable the soundblaster and enable an emulated soundblaster while playing the game.

Riper

Would you please be so kind to tell me how I do this?

Thanx!

[Gobalopper]

Are those the K6-2 processors? There are problems running Emperor on certain verisons of that chip...

http://westwood.ea.com/games/emperor/english/07_gamehelp/03_commonproblems.html

Near the bottom of the page, can't remember if the Duron is a K6-2 chip...

[bob_fox]

No, the K6/2 and Duron are totally different CPUs.

The K6/2 and K6/3 are derivations of the old K6, which is an old design aping the Pentium MMX.

The Duron (AMD internal name: Spitfire) is a stripped down Athlon with less onboard level 2 cache.

Anything the Athlon can do, the Duron can do almost as fast.

I've got a Duron 600 with 160 megs of RAM on a VIA K-133 based motherboard. Graphics card: TNT2 M64.

[Stealth]

8)

Which slot is the Live in ? Sometimes it needs to be in the 3rd pci slot down.

I have a durron 700 ockld to 900 on an A7v mobo  and it runs fine.

Also have a TBird 1.33  on an a7v133 and it runs fine in there too. I used via 1.32 drivers though. Also it runs with the standard win2k drivers on this one for the live.

[riper]

Ok to disble it, go to the configuration screen in windows. Select multimedia, and choose any other device as long s it's not the Live! one. Not all computers have emulated devices so it might not work but its worth a try.

Riper