Windows 7 - Mass Effect 1 framerate "stutters" help plz.

I decided to play part one before I go into part 2 and I noticed my framerate "stutters/drops". I've been playing with the settings for full screen and windowed mode and still no dice. The game is playable but this issue is really bugging the hell out of me. Can anyone help me out here? I upgraded to 1.02 before I started playing. I'm using Catalyst 9.7.

Before this game, I was able to play Dragon Age: Origins on full settings in windowed mode and the issue barely showed. I've even played Unreal III, BF:BC 2 beta and others and rarely seen this issue.

I was thinking that if i did a re-install, would this fix my issue? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Turn down the settings - even on my system here:

Excellent gaming performance in 7

Everyhting maxed except one option, filtering in the middle.

There was microstutter. Its the game and it has been fixed in Mass Effect 2.

I actually had the same problem and it was driving me bonkers.

I tried a whole ton of stuff, but I think I boiled the problem down to a couple things.

#1. If you have SQL Server installed (2005, 2008, whatever); turn it off on startup. I'm not entirely sure that this is what made the difference, but when I turned off my SQL 2008 instance the stuttering went away.

#2. If you have enough RAM ( 4GB works fine for me) Turn off disk paging.
To do this:
* Open Control panel
* Open System and Security
* Open *System*
* Click on 'Advanced System settings"
* On 'Advanced' TAB of System Properties dialog, click on 'Settings' button in 'Performance' Section
* On 'Advanced' TAB of Performance Options dialog, click on 'Change' button in 'Virtual Memory' Section.
* Turn off 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives' at the top
* Select 'No paging file' option, and click 'Set', answer 'Yes', then hit OK
* You may have to reboot.

#3. I also grabbed new video drivers, and Creative Sound Blaster drivers. As well, I installed Creative AlChemy.

#4. Turn off indexing on the hard drive you installed the game on.
* Right click on the hard drive you isntalled the game on in My Computer
* Un-check the "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed..." checkbox.

Now... other than #1; these will all give you general performance increases. As you can see... i tried a lot of things; and am enjoying the game much more now. Unfortunately, i tried so many things at the same time; I didn't exactly find the EXACT culprit of the stuttering. But these 4 steps did eliminate it for me (and it was baadd).

One final option... if these don't work

#* If you use multi-monitor... switch to one monitor only when playing the game. Windows 7 has made this really easy. Just hit 'Windows Key + P' when you're on the desktop; then select 'Computer Only'.
Likewise, you can bring it back to extended mode with the same shortcut.

Good luck, and let me know if any of this helped. If not... i'll try to pick my brain for other stuff I tried. The game is totally worth playing, and is much more enjoyable without that stuttering business!

Before going through all of this and that try updating your DX9 files here... Download details: DirectX Redist (August 2009).

Once you've done that do as Frostmourne has suggested by turning down settings, preferably one at time to help find the culprit. I would start with "Dynamic Shadows" first, then move over to Audio and move from "Hardware" to "Software"

And yes, make sure you have the latest drivers for you hardware.

BTW I ran through ME1 without any issues, micro-stutter or otherwise.

Oh, make sure you have the latest patch for the game.

For me, it was generally in parts of the Citadel and Normandy. Nevertheless, it has been fixed in Mass Efect 2. Only one area had slight hitching - Deck 3 of the Normandy SR2.

Frostmourne, other then the fact we both have the same video card, you have a better system then me, yet I've had no issues in either game. Have you looked at you CCC settings? As I mentioned in my ME thread I leave the settings on default and do game settings through the game console. Check it out.

Have a look here... Mass Effect Community - Mass Effect Crashing/Freezing

thanks for the input all. I went ahead and installed/updated the DX-redist. I also went w/kaidon's step #4. Just waiting for the index thing to stop so I can restart comp and test it out.

syg - I just read that link and I've encountered the crash(x2) when I did the investigate thingy while the NPC is talking.

I'll still play around with the settings to see what works. But it kinda sucks since I can play Dragon Age:Origins at maxed (but at 2AA) and windowed (1280x720) and the "stutter" is much less than ME.

Oh yeah, I really can't update the Cat drivers because of HP and their isht. So atm I'm stuck at 9.7. I know of sites that can modify drivers like 9.9 (beta for notebooks) and 9.12. But I'd like to not mess w/my setup as much as possible. The only thing noticeable that I've done was undervolt.

Yeah, all my other games ran utterly perfect on my machine as well. Mass Effect was definately an exception with its stuttering. Did turning off the indexing help?

CCC virtually identical to yours - adaptive AA on, otherwise at default. Its the game.