@crinrict a bit of digging on multiple forums shows that people with brand-new top-notch gaming laptops and gaming desktops as well as people with regular PCs are having similar problems with university freezing their games... my tech-savvy code-monkey husband already checked the DxDiag and says it's more than capable of running the game (especially since the custom build high-end heavy gaming desktop he build for me is having the same issue as my regular Lenovo Ideapad laptop from 2017)... guess I'll have to stick with not playing university until EA finally decides to fix the problem...
