Games Workshop’s recent price increases, while expected every year, seem to be somewhat excessive this time around and as a result I’m not currently able to allocate any funds for purchasing any new models or accessories. I know it’s something alot of people are experiencing right now. So alongside painting some of my long-shelved Fantasy miniatures, I’ve managed to pick up a copy of Dawn of War II: The Complete Collection very cheaply in order to get a 40K fix.
I’ve played demo versions of both Dawn of War II and its predecessor before and enjoyed them immensely, so I thought it was about time I got stuck into the full blown campaigns. I always feel a quiver of excitement when opening, installing and playing a new software title and in this case the effect was going to be doubled as it would actually involve two of my favourite pastimes. Everything went swimmingly during setup, but things began to go wrong just a few minutes into the tutorial mission…
Crash to desktop… Aaaaaarrghhhhhhhhhhh!
And it continued to happen. No apparent reason, nothing I could replicate with any certainty, just random crashing. And if you’ve played any of the DoW games before, then you’ll know that you can only save your progress at the main Campaign menu following a successful mission so I was not going to make any progress in the game. Very, very frustrating. Of course I immediately set out on the usual path to solving such a problem: turned down all settings, reinstalled DirectX and the MS Visual C++ libraries and made sure all video and audio drivers were up to date, but to no avail.
Then, a single line in the DOW2 / Chaos Rising Tech Support FAQ caught my eye relating to AMD processors – “…users with dual-core AMD X2 CPUs must install the dual-core optimizer…“. Mmm, worth a try I thought. And it seems to have fixed the problem! Loading times are slightly reduced, cut scenes play smoother, fps have become more consistent and so far, no more crashes. Obviously I’m pleased with the result because it means I can now get stuck into playing the game without further hitch. But it has left me wondering how many other games I might have had problems with in the past may have benefited from using this seemingly insignificant, yet vitally important driver/service?
If you are running an AMD X2 64 dual-core system and have been experiencing problems with DoW2 (or any other games), I recommend you check that the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer is installed, and if not, download it from AMD’s site here: AMD Dual-Core Optimizer