FC New install Stuttering . . . and SOLUTION

I recently built a new system and am slowly putting back my favorite games. Today I decided to battle with LockOn/Flaming Cliffs. Lockon would install and run fine. But after I added Flaming Cliffs there were these horrible pauses that started from the loading screen and continued until the sound finally craps out. You can hear "clicks" occuring right before every pause. Very strange. Adding the new patches did not help, nor did moving the game from my RAID drive to a non-RAID drive.

The problem (after spending several hours on this) is the game not liking to run on Dual Processors. My system is using a newer CORE2 processor . . . and apparently Lock On does not really like it. When I manually changed the affinity to one CPU (I choose processor 1 rather than 0) it runs fine. All that stuttering goes away.

So for part II of this post . . . I found this utility that is FREEWARE and runs with INTEL processors.

http://www.geocities.com/edgemeal_software/SetAffinity/index.htm

It will run in the task bar and automatically apply the affinity settings of your choice to the program. Very easy to use. All it does is affinity changes . . so its simpler than other solutions like nHancer.

FYI

I have read quite a few posts on this stuttering with Core2Duo's, but to be 100% honest, I too have an Intel 2.67Ghz Core2Duo (Oc'd to 3.75Ghz) with 3Gb of ram and have never had any stuttering with LockOn and Flaming Cliffs 1.12a (knocks on wood) for the last 6 to 8 months. It is a custom system I built myself, but maybe it has to do more with the components making up the system and to a lesser extent that the actual cpu being a dual processor as this is the second dual processor system I custom built and neither of them have issues with LockOn FC 1.12a and stuttering. For reference the other earlier system was an AMD 5000+ X2 dual core processor.

Yea some people have to run it on one core and others don't. For example, I have a core 2 duo on my laptop and I didn't have to change anything and it runs just fine.

However, for those that do need to change it, i read you need to do this

right click icon

properties

select lockon

set affinity

set to 1 core

Also, welcome to the forum kamikaze, my first screen name also had kamikaze in it over at the ubi forums, so glad to see another haha.

Thanks for the welcome!

I suppose its possible that either my Creative Audigy2 or 8800GTX are causing the problem . . but it is definitely tied to Flaming Cliffs. The game ran fine prior to installing that addon. So I'm a bit baffled. And yes . . . the drivers are up to date for both devices <grin>. I cant test (easily) using the MB's onboard soundcard to verify. But then, why would it have run fine with plain LOCKON but then chock with Flaming Cliffs? Curious. Something definitely changes.

The advantage to the tool I have referenced is you do not have to change the affinity through the Task Manager manually each time you start the game. After setting it once, the utility remembers it and automatically does it for ya. Much easier. And being freeware . . . its free legally. BONUS!

In either case . . this may help somebody.

FYI