splinter cell problem

[stryder]

i just bought and installed splinter cell- double agent but every time i try to run it it crashes displaying a box that says-trying to set non registered vertex shader. i ran the hardware detection that came with the game and it said that my system meets the minimum specs to run the game , except for a big red cross next to-shader model 2,000000. then it says it needs shader model 3.0 or higher.
is there anything i can do about this or would i need to get a better grfx card to run this game? i hope not as i`m a bit skint at the moment, but if this is the only solution could someone suggest a card that would run it,to replace my current card-ATI radeon 9800xt? preferably one that wouldn`t cost to much.
thanks in advance

 

[stryder]

are shader models something that can be updated like drivers or are they a hardware part of the individual graphics cards? sorry but not very well up on video cards! or much else come to think of it!

 

[stryder]

done em all !

 

[stryder]

is the 9800XT an x8 series card?

 

[stryder]

You would need a new graphics card.
Nvidia 6800 or above
ATI X1800 or above

Also, running at high settings requires 2Gb ram or it'll be jumpy

sorry, its probably another daft question but do you mean 2Gb ram on the card or system memory?