Consistent Freezing on Mafia 2 specifically (not other titles AFAIK)

[VG Docs]

Quick Preface 

I know what my rig can and can't do, it should be doing perfectly fine with Mafia 2. I know this because it USED to perform very well in Mafia 2 before I quit playing it. I tried to start playing it again and now I'm getting this issue.

 

Rig

CPU: G4500 | RAM: LPX 16GB 3000 MHz | Mobo: Asrock z170m Extreme4 running the latest BIOS | GPU: GTX 560 Ti | NO OVERCLOCKS, all drivers appear to be up-to-date.

 

Issue 

Mafia 2 (from the very first splash screen to in-game) will freeze for 4+ sec. usually. Afterwards it will play like normal (at the expected frame rate, 50+), but only for 1-3 seconds before freezing again. It does this repeatedly. 

 

Troubleshooting Attempts (All Unsuccessful)

Uninstall & Reinstall graphics drivers | Verified integrity of the cache through Steam | Ran Furmark for ~1 hour to test for GPU and PSU issues | Unplugged everything from the I/O except mouse & keyboard to see if it could've been a DPC issue | Restarted the game after putting all settings at their lowest (except resolution) with PhysX disabled | Toggling between fullscreen and windowed, vsync on & off.

 

Additional Info That May Be Useful

This is what the CPU does. The spikes upward are actually when it goes back to normal. This may seem awfully high for many who aren't very familiar with CPU usages in gaming, but trust me- that's normal. The abnormality is when it spikes downward and stays there for a while (that's when my PC is frozen). And yes- it's my PC that's frozen, not just the game.

I've also tried a few other games as well: FEAR, Plantera, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 Demo (to test when the GPU is being fully stressed). It appeared to freeze once on Plantera's initial splash screen but that could've just been the game booting up. Outside of that, there were no issues with any of these games. I plan to test a few Blizzard games but don't expect much unusual. I also plan to install a couple audio drivers and reinstall GPU drivers for the nth time but I'm basically out of ideas. 

[ARikozuM]

Haven't played Mafia 2, but what's the usage on the GPU (temp, VRAM, and %) and the disk? Is the game on SSD or HDD?

[VG Docs]

39 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

what's the usage on the GPU (temp, VRAM, and %) and the disk? Is the game on SSD or HDD?

Here's the GPU info. Normally I'd assume the downward spikes were when it locked up but I'm pretty sure it locked up much more frequently than those.

It's on a hard drive but (as shown in the task manager pic of the CPU) it's not being used much.

 

Little bit of more info: when it freezes the sound actually still plays back smoothly and I can control my character (although I'm basically blind to what he's doing for the next few seconds)

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, Trogdor8freebird said:

snip

Do you have a USB drive that it can be installed to? Latency could be an issue. 

[VG Docs]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Do you have a USB drive that it can be installed to? Latency could be an issue. 

No but I have two hard drives. I don't know that it'd help though considering I have no issues with any other games on the same drive. I might try it if I can do it without re-downloading though (have a data cap).

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, Trogdor8freebird said:

No but I have two hard drives. I don't know that it'd help though considering I have no issues with any other games on the same drive. I might try it if I can do it without re-downloading though (have a data cap).

You can move the file to the other hard drive and just point/add the location as a Steam Library beforehand.

[VG Docs]

38 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

You can move the file to the other hard drive and just point/add the location as a Steam Library beforehand.

I tried it and there doesn't seem to be any change. Also another game now is starting to do it, WoW.

[ARikozuM]

5 minutes ago, Trogdor8freebird said:

I tried it and there doesn't seem to be any change. Also another game now is starting to do it, WoW.

Do you have MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner? You should bring up the OSD and use that to find what components' usages are. It'll tell you if the issue is your CPU, RAM, GPU, or whatever else. 

 

Do you have all of your drivers? Have you recently updated the GPU driver? Have you tried to run an older driver?

[VG Docs]

16 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Do you have MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner? You should bring up the OSD and use that to find what components' usages are. It'll tell you if the issue is your CPU, RAM, GPU, or whatever else. 

 

Do you have all of your drivers? Have you recently updated the GPU driver? Have you tried to run an older driver?

I tried MSI afterburner with rivatuner earlier (forgot to mention in original post) but it only made the freezing worse to the point where I couldn't effectively track anything.

Yeah, I do have all of my drivers that I'm aware of (used driver booster) and I recently tried using a very slightly older GPU driver. Not sure where I could get even older drivers than those but both drivers I tried didn't fix the issue.