Core duo PC's

[Poo Bear]

Some people have mentioned the game freezing on core duo machines and one person described following the instructions below and fixing the problem. I'd like to get that confirmed, so if anyone else can comment then please do.

"Disabling Dual-Core on a per application basis
Some programs may have problems (mainly games, although some applications too). To make these games/applications run normally you have to make them run on a single core.

Here are instructions on how to disable the Dual-Core functions of your Core Duo for a specific program.

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del which will bring up the task manager.
2. Click on the Processes tab and scroll until you find the programs executable (eg icytower13.exe).
3. Right-click on (in this case) icytower13.exe and click on the bottom entry in the menu which says "Set Affinity...".
4. You should have 2 options there CPU 0 and CPU 1.
5. Untick one of the boxes (doesn't matter which).
6. Click OK.
7. Have fun.

Due to the way Windows is programmed, when you first launch an application it will run on both cores. For (generally) all older programs this doesn't work out, which is why you need to disable one of the cores.

The reason it might not work with two cores is because current dual-core technology is not perfect, the cores are not entirely synced.

I might also add that games which use the StarForce CD protection will not load (authenticate the disc) if both cores are enabled"

This sounds really dubious to me, so I'm intrigued to hear if it's true. Plus, is there a better way to do this i.e. always mark an app as running on one core rather that having to do it manually every time it starts up?

[Slyh]

I own a Dual-Core system (AMD) and don't have any problems with Mr.Robot.

Some games had performance issues on my system before I installed the "AMD Dual-Core Optimizer" driver, which can be download for AMD processors here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html

Maybe this helps some people who have the freezing problem?!

Some more guesses:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327809/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909944/en-us

Probably the gamedev.net-forums is a good starting point to search for solutions to this problem. (But I guess you already did look there.)

[SethP]

When I first played Mr. Robot all the way through, it was on a dual core machine (IBM Thinkpad T60, Centrino Duo). I can't remember any bugs or glitches that I encountered; suffice to say that none of them were show stoppers.

[Weeble]

I'm running on a Core 2 Duo. I've not played the main game as extensively as on my other machines yet, but I've not observed a problem. I think I did most of my level-editing and testing on this machine.