Q: My Serious Sam/Quake 3/Unreal (or any other old game) is very laggy with my dual core processor. Even the menu is very laggy. What's wrong with my processor?


A: Nothing. Some old games don't work with some dual core processors, because the game doesn't know how to use two cores. You'll have to force the to use only one core. Luckily there are easy ways to do this.






Setting the affinity manually

1. Start your game normally.
2. Press Windows button or ATL+TAB to get out of the game.
3. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to go to the Task Manager.
4. Under the Processes tab, right click the *.exe file for your game and go to Set Affinity, Uncheck CPU 1 (or CPU 0, doesn't matter). And click OK.


Example: Setting the affinity manually for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Choose only one core.




Unfortunately, you will have to do this every time you open your game. Luckilt there is a way to make this permanent.







Setting the affinity permanently

1. Download imagecfg.exe, here.
2. Copy imagecfg.exe to %systemroot%\system32 (or C:\Windows\system32), and %systemroot%\system32\dllcache (or C:\Windows\system32\dllcache). Doing so will make imagecfg a system command.
3. Back up your game *.exe file. Imagecfg will alter your game *.exe file, if you want to use two cores again just put that old *.exe back.
4. Go to command line: Start -> Run -> type "cmd" and press Enter.
5. Write this command: 'imagecfg -a 0x1 c:\path\to\file.exe' and press Enter. Of course use your real path to the game. Your game will now always use one core.




Example: Setting the affinity permanently for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Path to the game.




Example: Setting the affinity permanently for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Command line.







For more info & examples regarding ImageCFG.exe, visit this page.