Basically, since FFXI doesn't know how to multi-thread, it only uses one core. This is fine except when it maxes out one core and it actually causes my CPU to freeze. What's peculiar is that this doesn't happen in cities or most areas other than that, and it seems to be completely random. So far I've froze in dangruff, beaudeux, quicksand caves and most recently arrapago reef.

The freeze isn't an overheating type freeze, or a RAM freeze. My PC will, without warning, freeze entirely. My keyboard doesn't respond at all. Shortly after FFXI freeze and I can't do anything, music in the background playing via chrome will play for a couple of seconds longer and then freeze as well. There are no skips in music or in video. It is a literal freeze. I can't hit the reset button on my tower, it doesn't work. I have to actually hold down the power button until my computer turns off and then turn it back on.

I searched for this problem and found this http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33976820. This person uses the same CPU and GPU as me. They fixed the problem by switching power management to high performance. This helped for a day, until yesterday I got to quicksand caves and it happened there. Then it was fine for a while until I was running the COR quest and froze in arrapago reef.

What very strange is that all the areas I've frozen in my CPU will run at 5-10% maximum. In cities I will use as much as 15-20% but haven't had this problem in a city.

It just happened twice within 5 minutes, sitting in gustaberg fighting level 1 bees running at 5% CPU.