?

what exactly is the "it" you're referring to? 

saying it's "never a good idea" is just patently false, friend. its not good to do so without reason or cause, and it's smart to make backups. but "never"? no.

"it" was me referring to the symptoms the OP was finding in their game.

More importantly unless you can afford to replace it if you brick it, dont flash your firmware unless you have tried absolutely everything else, within reason, first.

You should eliminate all software possibilities first, it's elementary IT problem solving.

Two general rules i learnt at college and uni:

#1 If a driver breaks something roll back. This is why corprate networks have testbeds incase an update breaks something. Yes the makers do make mistakes.

#2 Firmware is the last thing anybody should be messing with if they dont know exactly what they're doing. Particularly on a boot critical component because it's a real pain in the ass to restore the old firmware when you can't get past POST.

If you know what you're doing then you shouldn't care what other people have to say in tech advice anyway, you know what you're doing. OR you can afford to replace the component if you brick it, but for the average user just dont do it.

@cfehunter 

lulz ok you think I'm n00b. that's cool. i've been working with this kind of thing since before you were born. 

You weren't clear at all about the "it" - since you said "it" would happen in every app that has 3D in it. But "it" doesn't, my card runs plenty of other games just fine. 

If you took the time (and I don't expect you did) to read that entire ATI/AMD forum thread, you'd see it was a VERY specific and uncommon problem with certain ATI cards. I'm not even sure the problem was occurring in anything but HD4850s. Someone figured out the fix. So why did I mention it here? Because maybe it can help Stardock, who might know the differences between firmware versions of ATI cards. 

Troubleshooting the Elemental problem is an issue for me, cfehunter, because stardock (rightfully) wants players to have the most updated drivers possible. But putting the most updated drivers on my computer - breaks features. So rolling back, stardock tells me to update the drivers. Update the drivers, and my computer works WORSE. Ever read Catch-22?

So I had to find alternate solutions. Past "elementary IT problem solving" - I've been doing this a while.

but to anyone out there who's not comfortable with rebuilding their computer, yes, don't mess with firmware. If you don't share the specific problems in the ATI/AMD forum thread, dont flash your firmware from the link. If you don't have an HD4850, be sure you know what you're doing.

Hopefully that's enough disclaimers. 

Yeah that's about all i was trying to say. I highly doubt you were doing anything with IT before i was born though, being 4 years older than me and all.

Anyway i'm glad the fix worked for you, but it's likely (as has been said) a very specific work around, and i wouldnt suggest it to anybody that's got even a slightly different video card.