EggChen wrote:The only thing I have not tried is dropping down to one core... that just seems insane, and as Nightwatch pointed out, drivers and things which may be part of the issue could be running on other cores at start up.
Making the change to limit the CPU to one core in the computer's BIOS settings would fix this problem. Not all BIOSes permit it, but if yours does, it's worth a try. And you can return to multi-core when you are done.
And you might have to disable HyperThreading as well, if your processor supports it; new ones do.
It sounds like a race condition problem or synchronization problem, if single-core processors don't have it.
The problem can still arise when you limit just the game itself to one core, as the drivers and other processes (e.g., the DRM support) may already running in a separate core. Perhaps if you chose the same core as the drivers...? I don't have a multi-core processor to test, though, and I don't know how the drivers are handled by the kernel in XP. And Vista also handles the drivers in a new way, so there may be other differences (and bugs) as well.
Finally, as with STALKER, different environmental conditions make a big difference, as some dual-core users don't have a problem with STALKER while others do -- and some start having the problem when they make system changes (e.g., driver updates) or install game patches (e.g., no prob with STALKER 1.0004, but big one with 1.0005, or vice versa). Maybe it IS the specific UK-vs-US patch difference, or there's something different about the OS in North America that the EU prohibits Microsoft from including, something that loads the system differently...