Forgot to give some info.

Running Windows XP with all the up to date patches.
Have installed latest Hyperion 4-in-1 drivers from Via.

-Nuthatch.

If your Sound card is a Sound Blaster Live or Audigy, that could be your problem, but you didn't mention your sound card at all. Bad move there.

You're right, I didn't mention it. I don't have a card, and am using the sound that is built into the mobo as it was better than the SoundBlaster Live I had when I upgraded to the Dragon mobo.

Here is Soyo's description of the sound chip:
On board CMI 8738 audio chip providing 4-channel audio solution
6-channel audio ready when used with a SPDIF audio connector

Looks like I have a resolution to my problem. To recap, I was experiencing the “Brutal FPS loss” issue on my system but the existing helps in the forums (such as lowering graphics acceleration a notch) didn’t help. I even went as far as to upgrade my graphics card from a GeForce2 GTS w/32MB to an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro w/128MB, to no avail. My relevant system config is as follows:

- Soyo Dragon Plus mobo w/AMD Athlon 1900+ CPU
- 512MB RAM
- Onboard sound chip (CMI8738/C3DX) from C-Media
- 2 80GB hard drives, non-raid config
- Windows XP Pro

NOTE: Your mileage on this may vary, especially with installed OS.

I’ve had the same installation built up over the last year and did not want to reformat to get a game to work. Instead, after reading through the postings here, posting a couple of my own, and hanging out in the IRC chatroom, I became very frustrated with the lack of a fix to the issue. I am generally a rather competent person with computers and work at a very detailed level with both Windows and Unix based OS’s every day. I also rarely have anything good to say about Microsoft. However, given the lack of any other solutions I called Microsoft support for Freelancer. The support info for Freelancer is here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... rodoffer14

I was first guided through dxdiag tests and gathering info about the hardware on my system, driver versions, etc. Most of which I had already done, and as previously noted, I had already updated all versions of drivers and BIOS.

Next I was guided through running winconfig, a diagnostic/debugging utility for Windows XP. I was instructed to disable WIN.INI and non-Microsoft services (hide Microsft services then select “disable all” and Startup items. After rebooting we also went into system properties via Window+Pause/Break, Advanced, Performance Settings, and selected Adjust for Best Performance.

Under this configuration Freelancer now runs fine. I am now in the process of slowing reactivating everything to determine the specific program(s) that are causing an issue with Freelancer. My current config still has performance settings set for “best performance”, but WIN.INI has been re-enabled, all services have been re-enabled, and most of my Startup items have been re-enabled. The culprit appears to be a Start-up item.

I will post a brief followup when I have the final culprit identified.