Mass Effect Message Board  

So this is going to be my 9th playthrough of this game. The first 8 playthroughs were smooth in performance and were an obvious treat. But this time, I am getting incessent stuttering in the game, lags, framerate drops or whatever you may call it. What I have done is only reinstalled Windows 7 and upgraded it to SP1. And yes I updateded my video card drivers which I do every month if updates are available.

I really don't know why this is happening. I have gone through hundreds of forums and found nothing that helps me. This is really killing all the fun. Even after 8 playthroughs I feel like I haven't played enough...LOL

So any help will be appreciated. Lowering the settings does not help (And I used to play the game on High settings with no such issues before).

EDIT: Also, the CPU Usage meter in the Task Manager rises to 100% when I am playing the game. It never did that before.

[Edited by HonestGamer, 2/10/2011 1:21:32 AM]

I've been having a similar issue. Do you happen to have the Steam version of the game by any chance? I have mine added to Steam as a non-steam game, and sometimes Steam and the Steam overlay have CPU spikes as well, causing Mass Effect to lose the amount that Steam resources take up.

Try setting it to use less than the total amount of cores your CPU has (One if dual core, 3 or less if quad, etc.), and see how that goes. You can use MassAffinity which was designed for Mass Effect 2 because all it does is force the .exe to use the amount of cores specified (Most commonly one core).

There is a service pack 1 for Windows 7 is it in beta, or official???

Officially you can get an RC version of it directly from Microsoft. The latest version of it is RTM (which is the final version) but only avaliable to OEM channels.

Here's the link to the RC if you want to try it (Your Milage May Vary. It's not complete software. You do this at your own risk): Link

I have the retail DVD.

I forgot to mention this but the primary things I have done is to set the main exe's affinity to CPU1. It doesn't prove to be so helpful.

But if it did have issues with multi-core processors, it would have even bothered me during my previous 8 playthroughs.

I wouldn't recommend installing the SP1 at all unless the system says to do so. If one goes to Windows Updates and it is there to install, then I would. You can also look in the update history to see if it is installed (there are SP1 SQL updates that have to be installed as of July 12, 2010). The actual release of the RTM is for the first half of this year. Keep in mind the one for download is an RC (release candidate) and not the one for RTM (Release-to-Manufacturing).

Link