Hmm. I have the same specs as you, except with a 7600GTOC. What I would suspect that to be, is just trying to load textures and such, because when you zoom in it must have to increase detail for each ship texture, building, planet, etc I would imagine.

Things that might help:

- Get new drivers
- Make sure you don't have any overheating issues
- Defrag your hard drive.

I've had the same problem, but I don't have an old machine. I'm running a 1.8Ghz Dual Core, with 2 gigs of RAM and a ATI Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card. As a benchmark, it can handle Crysis at medium settings.

Zooming appears to cause the problem, with the game locking up when I either zoom in or out in larger battles (which means, for me, about a hundred in total).

I'm guessing, if it's intermittent like this, that it's due to the in-game text bug. I don't understand why this happens, but whenever there is text displayed on the game screen, ie whispers from other players, notifications of structures/ships completed, games saved or loaded, paused, etc., the framerate will take a nosedive, and will recover as soon as the text disappeaers.

I've seen moderators state this is a known issue and being worked on, so if this's actually the problem you're having, take heart and hold out for the next patch!

Well, I could, but I don't think I should have too. Sins isn't all that graphically intensive, is it? All it is is planet/ship models and a sky box, after all.

Also, I don't think my issue is related to the text bug. AFAIK, there's no text onscreen when I get the problem.

Sorry, I wanted to get some more information before responding.

-My normal frame rate is around 30-60 depending on how much is on the screen/how zoomed in I am. Usually it hovers in the 50’s unless text pops up on the screen, which (due to the known text bug) causes it to briefly drop down to the 30’s until the text vanishes.

-I have the latest drivers and my video card isn’t even remotely running hot, and I defrag regularly.

-The task manager reports that Sins is using about 1,250,000 K memory regardless of whether the problem is occurring or not. It also reports that Sins is using 100% CPU regardless of whether the problem is occurring or not.

-The problem doesn’t occur with any specific ship, planet or structure. In fact, while running some tests it just occurred on the main-menu screen (which I took a screenshot of to use as an example), which caught me by surprise because it’s the first time I’ve noticed it occurring there. When the mysterious drop in frame rate does pop up, it seems to only occur at specific zoom levels. Scrolling the mouse wheel forward or back allows the frame rate to return to normal until I zoom back to a specific point on the problem area. It can occur while zooming in on a fleet of several hundred ships, and it can also occur while zooming in on a single object in an otherwise empty gravity well.

-This occurs when there’s no text on the screen and is different than the text bug.

Now, here are some new things I’ve noticed:

-alt-tabbing out and back into the game restores the frame rate to normal.

-hitting the “printscreen” key to take a screenshot causes the frame rate to return to normal (actually, it causes the frame rate to return from say, 5, to 30 while there is text on the screen showing the path the screenshot was saved to, and then finally to 50 when the text disappears, but that interim stage is part of the known text bug).

So, I guess the question is.. why does my frame rate occasionally tank at particular zoom levels while focused on random objects, and why does taking a screenshot / alt-tabbing to desktop and back correct it?

Here's a before and after picture of the problem occuring at the main menu screen (FRAPS frame rate at the bottom left) :

Hmm, 169.21 is currently the latest release from the Nvidia site. I'm probably going to wait until they get another version released there. However, you mentioned that "the problem has gone away in all games", which implies you were experiencing a problem like this elsewhere. So far Sins is the only game I've experienced this problem on.

Now that I know that just snapping a screenshot will cause my frame rates to return to normal, it's not a huge deal, but the fact that it happens in the first place does seem odd and may be a symptom of a larger issue.