I think I found the problem from my experience all day on why the hardware mode will not work. My netbook, desktop, laptop, and both of my parents laptops, and my girlfriends laptop will not play this game in hardware mode ... they also have all different operating systems, but all of them use AMD based GPU's. My Girlfriends desktop uses Nvidia, and my mouth dropped to the floor when it worked on her computer. I'm stunned. Hopefully this can help towards a solution.

Post what type of GPU you have here and if it does or doesn't work, hopefully this issue will be resolved shortly with a mass of different experiences.

i use an ati radion 5870 and the game doesnt work in hardware mode

I have a Radion HD5870(not sure if it matters that its in a laptop or not) ^_^'

Desktop: Radeon 5670 - doesn't work

Laptop: Intel integrated HD3000 - works flawlessly in hardware mode. I'm detecting a pattern here.

Using a 5770 here. Same problem...

Does not work for me...

Yup same thing happened for me...Win 7 64bit. I think this is part of another problem posted on the other thread... Running everything at admin level.

This has now been FIXED [url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/populous_series/populous_the_beginning_cant_find_videocard/post18[/url]

Sorry how has this been fixed? i am still having the same darn issue and i see nothing in this topic that helps fix it

It is fixed lemme link to the right thread though D:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/populous_series/populous_the_beginning_cant_find_videocard/post18

Im also having this same issue..

win 64 bit.. radeon card

Repeating this from a different topic but hopefully it might be of help for some.
I've got a laptop on Win7 64-bit which has two switchable graphics chips: one ATI for high-performance, and an Intel one for power saving mode. Having had startup issues, and seeing the problems some were having with ATI, I tried switching to low power mode and it works fine. So, if you're on a computer that has this option it's worth a try.
I've not yet tried downloading a version of atiumdag from elsewhere for the ATI card to work, but copying the one stored elsewhere to that folder doesn't seem to work properly for me.

The atiumdiag.dll provided in post 13 above works here. However, even though 1024x768 @ 32 bpp works, I get a constant screen flicker and it's extremely annoying. Does anyone know how to get rid of that without ending processes ? A similar thing occurs in Pharaoh but it only happens if the program crashes.

EDIT: It seems that the screen flicker only occurs when the GOGSetup or GOGLauncher files are used. Using the original D3DPopTB executable has no screen flicker, but the main menu comes out very garbled.