Lol, you're right, OP. I literally just loaded the game up about 2 weeks ago and it was fine. Now, it's a stuttery, unplayable mess.

This is literally the dumbest thing GOG could have done to "preserve" the game. I have no doubt it'll get fixed, but this is embarrassing.

Wasn't Wow6432Node just a view for HKLM\SOFTWARE\ for 32 bits programs?
If the same keys appear directly under HKLM\SOFTWARE\ I'd only touch those.

No, I have entries under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node that aren't mirrored in HKLM\SOFTWAREand vice-versa. It's not a "mirrored key" the same way HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is for HKLM\Software\Classes. It's better to back up the game's registry entries (barely a 1-2kb sized chunk of text) and have it even if the game ignores it then lack it if the game needs it (DAO is a 32-bit game). Quite honestly all this wouldn't be needed though if GOG didn't keep gating access to "last known good" offline installers behind Galaxy every time they upload a newer bugged installer then delete everything else.

It's easy to change the cpu core affinity, run the game, start task manager (R-Ctrl + R-Shift + ESC), go to details tab, find the 32 bit game exe, right click on it, go down to set affinity, and select all cores or set it to whatever cores you want to run it on. Exit out of the screen and close task manager, play the game.

ok...before everything was working perfectly...and now I have to do additional manipulations with my computer...for what??? they ruined the game for me.

Yep just found out that myself, that works as a temporary fix.

Apparently you just have to do it every time you run the game, while the game is running? Better than nothing I guess. The executable you are looking for is DAOrigins.exe. Sure enough, only the first two CPUs were ticked at first.

And yes it did make the game smoother also for me, the framerate went from fluctuating around 35-55 fps to solid 60 fps.

It would be nice to know why GOG felt that change was a good idea, was it fixing some actual issue (that I may face now with my smoother graphics) or was it made out of habit or something?

To make matters worse, many CPU's thread affinity is arranged like:-

Thread 0 = Core 1
Thread 1 = Core 1's Hyper-threading
Thread 2 = Core 2
Thread 3 = Core 2's Hyper-threading
etc

So if affinity is restricted to threads 0 & 1, it may literally be running on a single Hyper-threaded core (typically 1.3x cores worth of performance) which is worse than running on 2x real cores minus hyper-threading.

Tbh, this thing seems like a total dog's breakfast.

I mean, if GOG were smart about this, their launch script would check the user's system to see how many cores are available and set the game's affinity appropriately. How hard can it be to do that? (of course, a well-coded multi-threaded game should be doing that for itself, in the first place ...)

I could probably code it myself in less than 30 minutes:

=> Q: number of cores available?

=> A: 12 cores with hyperthreading (6 real)

=> use a switch block to decide what to do (e.g. use 8 threads with HT)

Is it really rocket science?

And this is ignoring the other obvious point that if an application spawns 8 threads, the O/S should handle assignment to the cores that are available on the system.

According to instructions, I tried creating a shortcut like this:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DAOrigins" /High /affinity FFF "C:\GOG Games\Dragon Age Origins\bin_ship\DAOrigins.exe"

(to my understanding affinity FFF means the same as in binary 111111111111, ie. 12 logical CPUs used, which is what I have on this laptop)

But it still runs the game only with two logical CPUs, for me the only way to change that is to change the affinity from the task manager, while the game is running. Apparently the shortcut fix doesn't work if the affinity is forced within the executable itself?

Maybe you can do it with some third-party tool like System Explorer or WinAFC but meh, installing third-party tools to fix GOG's "fix"? :D

https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/144736-how-permanently-set-cpu-affinity-programs.html#post2341516

Yeah I would assume that to be the norm nowadays? At least I don't recall seeing these "1 logical CPU means 1 core" since I had a two-core Lenovo ThinkPad T400 (where I had an issue with Baldur's Gate 1-2 because they wanted to run on one core all the time at 100%, even in menus).

Or is hyperthreading now on its way out or sumthing?

Dragon Age runs fine with near endless amount of cores... so i dunno what is going on here.

The 2 games i own who REALLY got a "thread number issue" are called:

-Technomancer
-Blades of Time

Both will crash if there are over 16 threads, on AMD at least...

Intel is finish with Hyperthreading... but AMD is still using it. I think up to 24 cores are still supported by most games but as soon as someone is using a AMD 16 core with HT enabled (recommended) then many games may "pass", because it will results into 32 threads.

So I just discovered the situation is even worse, because of this.

As posted here before, I have downloaded the build 2 through lgogdownloader --galaxy-install command.
When I started it to test, the game had no DLCs. So to add up to the problem, Im actually stuck with broken offline installers and forced to use Galaxy on Windows for it to place the correct registry keys if I want to access the game I originally bought.

So, the situation with DAO right now for me is:

I bought a version of the game that now I can't access completly because GOG changed the original files and removed my access from it because they decided to update the game to a broken version and I can't roll back the offline installers.
If I try to download the rolled back version from Galaxy servers using lgogdownloader I will receive a downgraded version because I don't use internet on Windows and therefore don't want to use Galaxy. This happens because Galaxy create registry keys for the game to recognize DLC files.

Yes. Now Im a little bit angry.

I am actually thankful people was warning me, so i was NOT updating this game. My Installer is still the old one... i just need to make sure i never "lose" it.

I had a comparable issue with a Skyrim Update... the new update was crap and breaking many mods. Luckily i still had a old installer backed up. Without backup i would have been doomed.

For the majority of games a update is welcome but NOT always... some updates are worse.

I dont think GOG is that competent because if they are really capable... they would place a list of the last up to 10 offline installers with full download. Not having any rollback here can become a big issue in some cases.

And nope... not even Steam is that supreme... because without a troublesome "workaround" which is not viable to most of us... there is no way to roll back "out of the blue"... because this option is partially locked, on purpose.

On EGS it is even worse... rollback is simply totally impossible. On GOG it only works using Galaxy but it is inferior to the offline installer... because of many reasons... one of them "DLCs are in many cases JUST a enabler (data are already there but it is locked away) and without a offline installer those DLC content is in many cases DRMed"... as it will always need the account for every new install. If someone lose the account, or the access to it... they may lose the DLCs.

Im not going as far as saying they're incompetent because they do a good job on preserving many games with this store.
BUT - sometimes these kinds of decisions are weird.

What I don't understand is:

Why the hell Galaxy has rollback but Offline Installers don't?
Aren't those the same game files, albeit extracted (as they use InnoSetup)? Why can't they just give us 2 to 3 old offline installers?

This makes no sense at all in my mind.

You will have to ask GOG... this decision has not been done by any user.

I do agree... at least 3 rollback options i do consider critical.