Ive just rceently upgraded my video card from a geforce 4 ti4600 to a Radeon 9700 pro. The card installed fine witht he latest version of the catalyst drivers, and running the latest version of directx. However when I play the game and go to video options it says the hardware support is running at directx 8.1 and not 9.

Can anyone offer any advice as to why it may be doing this, and what I can do to solve the problem? It must be some setting or somthing related to my previous card?

Try running this command in the console: See if that changes the DirectX mode.

You can also add to the startup command in your shortcut to force it to load in 9.0 mode.