Freeze! Assassin!

[Uncle Yang]

Assassin's Creed runs very smoothly for me on my computer. Very smoothly that is, until i go to either hide, save a citizen or kill someone

The second i press F to help the citizen, the screen will go flash that pretty design that its supposed to but will freeze for 2 - 3 seconds before i can actually play. Same with assassinations, i can sneak up on the guy just fine, but when i click to kill him, the game freezes for 2 - 3 seconds. When i go to hide in a roof garden, the game freezes for the same amount of time...

I have a pretty sweet system, and people with computers worse than mine arent having these issues with all settings on highest.

I have windows XP
I am running everything on high and everything is on except for Vsync. I tried putting everything lower but it didnt help the problem much
i have an EVGA 8800GTX and an EVGA 680i motherboard, i have a 3.00GHZ core2 duo.
i should be able to run circles around this game but instead i freeeze and lag when i do exactly what the title suggests: assassinate...

help me ouuut! please!

*edit

I put EVERY setting on low and turned EVERYTHING off and i still had this problem

[Uncle Yang]

btw, i have 4 gigs of RAM

[Uncle Yang]

bump.
help please!
all my drivers are up to date and the game is fully patched. I am completely stumped.

[Uncle Yang]

bump!

[Uncle Yang]

ive tried physically fixing the CD itself to no avail.
Suprisingly i killed 4 attackers smoothly and with no lag in a very small square while rescuing a citizen in the city of Jerusalem. but everywhere outside that small area i still have the problem....

[Uncle Yang]

bump...
this game has taken twice as long as it should have because of this problem lol

[akedm]

I do not own the system, and it's just a guess, but maybe something will work...

1) I have an AMD dual-core system, and perhaps if your computer's like mine in that it has more than one core, perhaps forcing the game to use only one core may help...I doubt it. I remember hearing before that AC is designed for multiple cores especially since the AI is so sophisticated. And now I think of it, if you were having multiple core problems that would be affecting the game from the beginning.

2) Since it's only affecting you when a "situation" occurs that tells me that the game is pre-loading some sort of AI or texture package during the freeze, and that it needs to load this package because it has not loaded it before likely due to a RAM issue. Strange that friends are able to play the game on higher settings than yours with less of a system...is your system a 32-bit or 64-bit system. I know a 32-bit system can access only 3 GBs of RAM (some numbers thing).

3) AC has gotten high marks for AI development especially since AI is such a pain in the rear to develop; it's like a leap forward I hear, which may mean there's a LOT of calculating going on during engagements. And since this also occurs when engagements happen (assissinations, interactions, etc) I'm thinking that it's AI that's the issue somehow. Are there AI settings in the game? If so, what are your AI settings vs. your friends?

4) Perhaps it's a combination too : AI hogging RAM + graphics.

5) Here's a thought : I discovered a lot of what I thought were video problems were actually audio problems. The audio would lag for some reason, but it'd look like a video problem becuase the screen would freeze until the issue resolved itself. You mentioned a graphics card. What about a sound card? Set the audio to low and then check it out.

6) Some games have a safe mode. I remember finding safe mode versions of the games next to the game itself in the Windows START menu. I imagine that'll fix your problem if there's a safe mode, but not really solve the WHY.

7) Is there a RESET option of sorts in the game settings menu. If so, RESET. Then play around with each control balancing audio, video and whatever other settings there are until you get what you like.

8) How big is your monitor vs your friends? If you're forcing the game to push through a ton of pixels due to a large monitor at a high resolution...I know you said their settings are higher, but just a thought. How's the resolution chosen in the game: by numbers (1024x768) or simply by low, medium, high? If it's low, medium, high and you have the bigger monitor then your high setting is MUCH MUCH more taxing on a processor than their high setting.

[gamer101]

you mentioned fixing the actual cd if scratched it may have to reread the data causing lag rip the cd to an iso and then burn the cd this will make the cd like new not coping wat it reads becuase and iso is an image that is not readable unless used to recover the cd if the cd is damaged

[Uncle Yang]

Hey akedm, now that you mention it, and the more ive thought of it, im convinced its a sound problem

ive tried turning off hardware acceleration and stuff but that didnt work. I think its a sound problem because during the freezes, the sound plays but the video does not and the animation just follows through virtually soundless after the actual sound plays.

Any ideas?

thanks for all the help thus far

[akedm]

OK, so you got a sound card. I'd say update the drivers, but that's such an catch-all answer I cant say if it'll help or not. But I'd suggest that if you're leaning toward the sound-thing, then why not post a similar question in the Hardware forum for audio (or whatever the forum for audio is called). I know jack about sound cards I'm sorry to say. But I do recognize your problem: It's one that occurs in many different games. And with that said, I'd bet that if you made a thread and/or searched the forum for something like "laggy sound" or "out of sync" or "freeze frame" or "no sound, only video" or the word synchronize...you get the idea, I bet you'd find a lot of answers.

Have you also checked the developer's forum, you know, whoever made the game. They may have a support center too or a community forum. And if all that fails, or you think it may help (I've done this before), call the local geeks at a pay-and-play LAN store. We have a local one here called Gamerz: a bunch of hi-tech computers, a bunch of kids paying to play the latest games LAN or online, and a bunch of knowledgeable geeks running the place. Just have pen and paper ready cause they'll probably talk fast and speak techno-geek.

Good luck.