[alexcraig]

Well guys,

I finally figured it out.

My solution involved two steps which I'm posting here to try and help anyone else who may run into the same issue.

Step 1 was wetwarev7's suggestion to use the affinity option on a running process to restrict the quad processor to utilitze only one of the cores.

Step 2 occured to me as the VPU automatic recovery sofware kicked in every time I experienced the problem. Bottom line .... I had to ratchet the card back from its defaults of 815Mhz on the GPU core and 3700 Mhz on the graphics memory. I scaled them back to 600 Mhz on the core & 2660 on the graphics memory.

Apparently, the card tries to throw way more at the game than it will handle in my rig. Note: This may be due in part to the fact that I'm into some serious overclocking. Can't say for sure.

At any rate, ATI card users can simply enable the Overdrive function in the Catalyst Control Center and instead of ramping up your settings ramp them back. I'm sure any number of other lower settings would work. However, the game ran stable for me at the settings I chose and I never saw the FPS drop below 82 anywhere in the Sub.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide the suggestions.

I would not have been able to solve this puzzle without learning the "Affinity" option trick from wetwarev7.