I'm just walking around, and the game freezes (sound keeps playing).

After about 5 seconds, it unfreezes and I can keep walking around. I'm assuming this is due to the way that the game streams content in and out.

I set absolutely everything to the lowest settings, and turned off all possible options, and it still does this.

I can turn the settings to medium / high, and the game runs perfectly smoothly, except for this occasional 5-second freezing that happens all the time.

It's very weird. My computer is on the lower end, but it does meet / exceed the required specs.

I have a 3.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Win XP SP3 with 3.25 gigs ram.

I have a GeForce 8800 GT (a 512 MB card), running the game at 1680 x 1050, and 30+ gigs free hard drive space.