[Fix] PC freeze + fast-forward in matches: check if C: drive hits 100%

Hi all. I had the classic issue: the game freezes for a second or two mid-match, then fast-forwards and the opponent ends up with the ball. My PC is high-end (i7 12th gen, RX 9070 XT, 32 GB RAM) and my connection is fine (1 Gb, 4 ms), so it wasn't specs or network.

WHAT I FOUND

Open Task Manager while playing. When the freeze happens, check whether your C: drive jumps to 100% usage. Mine did, even though the game is installed on a different drive (D:).

Using Resource Monitor (Win+R > resmon > Disk tab > Disk Activity), I found that during matches FC27.exe constantly writes about 4 MB/s to this file:

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Temp\EA SPORTS FC 27\_replay0.bin

That's the replay buffer. My C: drive is a budget SATA SSD (Kingston A400) that chokes on constant small writes, and the game freezes while it waits on the disk.

THE FIX: MOVE THAT FOLDER TO A FASTER DRIVE

Close the game, Steam and the EA App. Open Command Prompt (not PowerShell) and run these one at a time (change D:\GameCache to any folder on your fast drive):

robocopy "%TEMP%\EA SPORTS FC 27" "D:\GameCache\Temp EA SPORTS FC 27" /E /MOVE /R:1 /W:1

rmdir "%TEMP%\EA SPORTS FC 27"

mkdir "D:\GameCache\Temp EA SPORTS FC 27"

mklink /J "%TEMP%\EA SPORTS FC 27" "D:\GameCache\Temp EA SPORTS FC 27"

• If rmdir says "cannot find the file", that's fine.
• If mkdir says "already exists", that's fine too.
• The last command must say "Junction created for...".

This creates a link, so the game still "sees" the folder in Temp but actually writes to the other drive. After this, I haven't had a single freeze.

To undo: run rmdir "%TEMP%\EA SPORTS FC 27". That only deletes the link, not any files.

NOTES

• This probably only helps if your Windows drive is slow (a budget SATA SSD or an HDD) and you have a faster second drive. Check Task Manager first: if C: doesn't spike when you freeze, your issue is something else.
• Windows cleanup tools (Disk Cleanup / Storage Sense) may delete the link. If the freezes come back, run the mklink command again.
• I also moved the page file off C: and moved AppData\Local\EA SPORTS FC 27 the same way, but the replay file was the one that made the difference.

Hope this helps someone. EA, please let us choose where this file is written.