I was having similar problems after installing the patch. I use win 7 64bit and a GTX580 card.
There is a registry edit that will allow you to play the game i tried this but my game was very stuttery and game inputs were badly lagging.
Option 3 in this thread is the edit...
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=19819
However I rolled back my graphics drivers (i use Nvidia) to 296.10 I picked the clean install option. I then restarted my pc and all was back to normal with smooth graphics and gameplay. The 301.24 and 301.42 nvidia drivers I tried crashed the game as per OP