filipetolhuizen wrote:

As many of you probably know, setting a game to run in only 1 processor on a multi-core system causes a massive stuttering on most games. Has anyone got around this or have a clue on how to avoid it?

There's a saying, about teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs.

Your operating system is a complex, finely tuned piece of engineering. It's designed to run things smoothly by assigning processor time slices across multiple CPUs. Interfering with that can have a negative impact, as you've noticed. There's no reason to do it, you don't know better than a room full of software engineers.

Unless, of course, you're using older software that second-guesses the OS thread scheduler.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

In a test with Fighters Anthology, selecting the Shrinker flag on ACT 5.x got around this, but it only worked for this game (and single process mode is not needed for it to run as well). The Need For Speed 1 and 2 SE needs this to run, but this will cause the 2 SE 3dfx version intermittent pauses and 1 SE choppy gameplay.

The best and most reliable solution is to turn off multi-core-ness in the BIOS, OR run an operating system that doesn't support SMP (i.e. Windows 98/ME).

Not sure where I found it but Forcecore.exe can be used with a shortcut to set the affinity when a program is launched. This might help to avoid the issue as opposed to altering the environment while the game is already running.

Not sure where I found it but Forcecore.exe can be used with a shortcut to set the affinity when a program is launched. This might help to avoid the issue as opposed to altering the environment while the game is already running.

I once tried a program that did this (not sure if it was the same), but had the same side-effects. I never set the affinity while the game is running. I create a custom compatibility mode using ACT 5.6.

Just a small update: It seems that all EA games until late '98 need this fix to run under Windows 7, but not under XP. If anyone finds an alternative fix, please let me know. NFSSE in unplayable this way.