14 DAY TRIAL // The Saboteur was pretty much the last thing to come out of the late Pandemic Studios, after Electronic Arts tightened its belt and decided that this was a studio that simply had to go. As such, it seems like the game has some serious technical difficulties, and users with an ATI graphics card that run the game on Windows 7 were driven mad by the Irish agent blow-up-ateur. In a nutshell, if one has an ATI card, their chances of playing the game have a mathematical tendency to be zero. Now, even with the development problems that exist for the title, some people are still working on it, so a beta patch was released for it.
The patch comes with its own EULA, but, most importantly, it seems to solve the ATI compatibility issue. Another thing it does, though, is either freeze the game or tear the framerate on any Quad Core processors. Which is very strange, considering that Pandemic offered a 2.8GHz Quad Core CPU as a recommended system requirement for the game. So, the patch is salvation for some users, and total hell for others.
As the patch notes read, “Users with Quad Core CPUs will possibly have significant streaming issues without the following work around. The team is aware of this issue and is working on a fix for it in the next patch update. If you are running a Quad Core CPU please follow the steps below to set Game Only affinity on your CPU. While this will decrease the amount of streaming glitches, it is not a full proof fix.” The exact workaround is posted below, and be sure to keep your fingers crossed and lucky charms handy when you apply the instructions, because it looks like you're going to need all the help you can get.
Recommended Game-only steps for Quad Core users only:
Windows 7 and Vista
1.) Boot the game. 2.) Wait for the main menu to load, then press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. 3.) Select Start Task Manager. 4.) If the game is visible, press Alt-Tab, otherwise continue to the next step. 5.) Inside the Task Manager, go to the Processes tab. 6.) Find Saboteur.exe, right-click it, and select Set Affinity…. 7.) De-select CPU 2 and CPU 3. 8.) Click OK.