The thing I found about Sacred 2 Gold is that it doesn't like 64 bit operating systems. I'm running an early i7 cpu with Windows 7 64bit and I wanted to get this game running with all the bells and whistles, including the Elite Textures. Anyway, I found that combining all the known fixes together actually make this game work - crash free - on my computer and I believe that it will work on yours as well even if you are on Windows 8.1. So download this file and use all three fixes together. Let me know if it works, thanks!
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/933200-sacred-2-fallen-angel/69827470