This info is probably widely known but . . I have not found it mentioned elsewhere so . . .
If you have a dual core AMD processor . . . it might be worth giving the AMD Dual Core Optimizer a try if you have problems with your games running.
It helped Painkiller to run smoothly on my laptop. It doesn't have a GUI but installs and runs in the background. Can't see that it has affected anything other than PK runs better. It can be uninstalled using control panel. IT IS NOT FOR INTEL CPU's
Edit: My laptop is running a Turion 64 x2 processor - Vista Ultimate

Thanks for the link. I've known about this, but never bothered to do it. But I'll try it out on my Vista machine (my only AMD cpu pc) tonight.

Yeah, this is pretty essential if you have a dual core AMD processor and Beyond Good & Evil and Deus Ex too.

Doesn't that have issues of its own?

I think that Windows 7 has it as standard. But both that and the CPU drivers can help no end.

I installed it several months ago to see if it would correct some "jitters" in PK . . .it did and I completely forgot about it till today. I have not had a single issue with it and no crashes or unusual behavior. Your mileage may vary . . . =^ )

I posted about this in the PoP:SoT section (twice) but everybody ignored me :) .

I hereby yield "first" to thegammaray . . . =^ )