Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)
Hi everyone (and sorry for the long post),
For a short while now, after upgrading my computer (although perhaps
it's more accurate to call it building a new one) I've experienced a
general 'skipping' or 'stuttering' in many games, which is most
noticeable in the sound, although I'm not too sure why it happens. My
system is:
AMD Athlon 2800XP
512MB RAM
1 x CD-ROM drive
1 x CD-RW drive
1 x 13GB HDD
1 x 80GB HDD, partitioned into 4 x 20GB
GeForce FX5200, running Forceware driver version v56.64
Soundblaster Live! 24-bit, using drivers from the supplied CD
DirectX 9.0c
Win98SE
It seems to be most 'modern' games, that wouldn't run or would have run
very poorly on my old AMD K6-2 system, that cause the most problems.
The Sims 2, for instance, suffers from choppy music, but almost only
when loading families or lots. A similar thing happens in Anno 1503,
when loading a saved game. When the progress bar is nearly full and I
assume the game is then just setting things up, the music will start to
'skip' a touch.
Football Manager 2005 used to have choppy sound during a match, which
would also coincide with slightly jerky graphics. I have worked around
this problem in a way by pre-caching all the sounds before a match
begins which removes the problem, but if I have Winamp and an MP3 or CD
playing in the background the music will break up and/or slow down
fairly badly while this pre-caching occurs. Also, loading or saving a
game causes choppy music while it occurs.
And Morrowind runs fine- for about five minutes or so, at least when
using the SB Live. After that the sound and music begin to 'break' up
and become choppy, which gets worse the longer you play. This also
leads to choppy graphics, and obviously gameplay, and eventually leads
to a crash to the desktop. Also, I think it's been because of this
problem occurring with this particular game that I've had to reinstall
Windows twice since Christmas... ironically, the game seemed to be more
stable using the on- board sound as mentioned later on, so I may change
back to it at some point.
Other minor problems include the graphic equaliser bars in Winamp not
being accurate enough after playing a CD extensively- it seems the bars
are slightly ahead of the music, but when it moves onto a new track
this is 'reset'. Perhaps this is normal though and I just haven't
noticed it before, as I was used to playing CDs by pressing play on the
CD drive but this has stopped working for now (another bad mark against
the Soundblaster!). MP3 files seem to be unaffected by this though.
Occasionally browsing the Web can cause music to break up. And
sometimes I get something like static when playing games, which I've
especially noticed in Morrowind, or when using Winamp and playing games
with sound/ music. This static will usually clear itself up, although
it can take a short while. I'm not sure what causes it but it's
annoying when it happens.
I'm using the latest drivers for my motherboard I could find from
NVIDIA's website. Drivers later than v56.64 for my graphics card have
various problems, including problems booting back into Windows as I
personally experienced so I'm staying with these ones for now. There
don't seem to be any later drivers for the Soundblaster on Creative's
website. For the on- board sound, Realtek's v3.62 drivers seem to
perform well, later ones seem to introduce more problems of the type
I'm experiencing. I don't know about earlier versions though.
I'm not really sure what is causing this to happen. I thought possibly
the on- board sound was stealing too many CPU cycles, hence I bought
the Soundblaster but that doesn't seem to have helped, and especially
with Morrowind may in fact have made things slightly worse- Morrowind
was playable for at least a few hours with the on-board sound in most
cases before crashing to the desktop or with a blue screen, but it's
lucky if it lasts 15 minutes now.
The only other things I can think of is that it may be something to do
with disk access, or the processor. I've tried changing various
settings in the BIOS, including changing interrupts, disabling devices
to free up more resources, and even changing a few of the 'secret'
options which are normally hidden from you when you first go into the
BIOS to see if the graphics card is at fault, but to no avail. Enabling
DMA for all drives does nothing either. Reinstalling Windows with just
the motherbaord, graphics and sound drivers, and then trying any of the
above games hasn't helped which makes me think it's possibly a hardware
problem more than anything.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Karl
Hi everyone (and sorry for the long post),
For a short while now, after upgrading my computer (although perhaps
it's more accurate to call it building a new one) I've experienced a
general 'skipping' or 'stuttering' in many games, which is most
noticeable in the sound, although I'm not too sure why it happens. My
system is:
AMD Athlon 2800XP
512MB RAM
1 x CD-ROM drive
1 x CD-RW drive
1 x 13GB HDD
1 x 80GB HDD, partitioned into 4 x 20GB
GeForce FX5200, running Forceware driver version v56.64
Soundblaster Live! 24-bit, using drivers from the supplied CD
DirectX 9.0c
Win98SE
It seems to be most 'modern' games, that wouldn't run or would have run
very poorly on my old AMD K6-2 system, that cause the most problems.
The Sims 2, for instance, suffers from choppy music, but almost only
when loading families or lots. A similar thing happens in Anno 1503,
when loading a saved game. When the progress bar is nearly full and I
assume the game is then just setting things up, the music will start to
'skip' a touch.
Football Manager 2005 used to have choppy sound during a match, which
would also coincide with slightly jerky graphics. I have worked around
this problem in a way by pre-caching all the sounds before a match
begins which removes the problem, but if I have Winamp and an MP3 or CD
playing in the background the music will break up and/or slow down
fairly badly while this pre-caching occurs. Also, loading or saving a
game causes choppy music while it occurs.
And Morrowind runs fine- for about five minutes or so, at least when
using the SB Live. After that the sound and music begin to 'break' up
and become choppy, which gets worse the longer you play. This also
leads to choppy graphics, and obviously gameplay, and eventually leads
to a crash to the desktop. Also, I think it's been because of this
problem occurring with this particular game that I've had to reinstall
Windows twice since Christmas... ironically, the game seemed to be more
stable using the on- board sound as mentioned later on, so I may change
back to it at some point.
Other minor problems include the graphic equaliser bars in Winamp not
being accurate enough after playing a CD extensively- it seems the bars
are slightly ahead of the music, but when it moves onto a new track
this is 'reset'. Perhaps this is normal though and I just haven't
noticed it before, as I was used to playing CDs by pressing play on the
CD drive but this has stopped working for now (another bad mark against
the Soundblaster!). MP3 files seem to be unaffected by this though.
Occasionally browsing the Web can cause music to break up. And
sometimes I get something like static when playing games, which I've
especially noticed in Morrowind, or when using Winamp and playing games
with sound/ music. This static will usually clear itself up, although
it can take a short while. I'm not sure what causes it but it's
annoying when it happens.
I'm using the latest drivers for my motherboard I could find from
NVIDIA's website. Drivers later than v56.64 for my graphics card have
various problems, including problems booting back into Windows as I
personally experienced so I'm staying with these ones for now. There
don't seem to be any later drivers for the Soundblaster on Creative's
website. For the on- board sound, Realtek's v3.62 drivers seem to
perform well, later ones seem to introduce more problems of the type
I'm experiencing. I don't know about earlier versions though.
I'm not really sure what is causing this to happen. I thought possibly
the on- board sound was stealing too many CPU cycles, hence I bought
the Soundblaster but that doesn't seem to have helped, and especially
with Morrowind may in fact have made things slightly worse- Morrowind
was playable for at least a few hours with the on-board sound in most
cases before crashing to the desktop or with a blue screen, but it's
lucky if it lasts 15 minutes now.
The only other things I can think of is that it may be something to do
with disk access, or the processor. I've tried changing various
settings in the BIOS, including changing interrupts, disabling devices
to free up more resources, and even changing a few of the 'secret'
options which are normally hidden from you when you first go into the
BIOS to see if the graphics card is at fault, but to no avail. Enabling
DMA for all drives does nothing either. Reinstalling Windows with just
the motherbaord, graphics and sound drivers, and then trying any of the
above games hasn't helped which makes me think it's possibly a hardware
problem more than anything.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Karl
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