Lower frame rates since 2.2

[swaldman]

Well... the first raid I did after 2.2, I dropped to unplayable frame rates. So I turned off the Reverb option, which helped.
However, things are still slower than they were before the patch, to levels which do affect my raid performance.

I can only assume that this is due to the new sound system - somebody mentioned to me that everything that had been delegated to the sound card has now been brought into software (!) (and given my experience with reverb causing slowdown, this does seem plausible).

Can anybody suggest any ways to improve things? I suspect I'm stuck with it....

Oh, before anybody starts saying what a wonderful graphics card they have, IT's NOT A GRAPHICS ISSUE. Thanks :-)

[Tunga]

System specs?

[swaldman]

Athlon64 3000 (ie 2.6GHz)
2Gb RAM
Graphics.... Nvidia 7600 of some sort, I forget which - but my frame rate is not graphics-limited.
"Envy24" on-board sound.

[Kalos]

Have you tried updating the sound card's drivers?

I fear you may need to buy another one, something like an Audigy 2 NX (an fairly anchient peice) handles fine. VIA have been a bit iffy for me in thier products, I don't fully trust the Envy24 to be capable.

[moopy]

A lot of onboard chipsets will only mix eight voices in hardware, and any more might well be CPU mixed. A "proper" soundcard might do better. Failing that, reduce the number of voices in the ingame audio config, and see if that makes a difference.

[tralkar]

Sound messing up frame rate? very unlikely...Have you turned of this new sound thingy? do you get the same problem?

[swaldman]

Sound messing up frame rate? very unlikely...Have you turned of this new sound thingy? do you get the same problem?

It may not be the sound, of course. But my frame rate has dropped with 2.2, and the sound is the obvious thing that has changed.

No, I haven't turned off the sound - but that wouldn't prove anything either way, since I didn't try turning off the sound before the patch.

@moopy - that might work, but frankly, with less than max channels it sounds crap. It didn't before 2.2. I'm still failing to see what benefit the patch has brought in exchange for the drop in performance.

(yes, I know it's pointless whinging here. Sorry).

[WatcherZero]

I agree it probably is the sound, to see how much influence its having do a comparison of standing in the same place looking in the same direction with sound on and off, that way you can see how much load its shifting to your CPU.

[tralkar]

Well my sound card is over 5years old and i have not see a drop in my frame rate at all... Its still at over 100+

[WatcherZero]

he doesnt have a soundcard, he has onboard sound, i.e. a chip on the motherboard that acts like a limited soundcard, when that chip is taxed beyond its limits the computers CPU takes over and does all the work, and because of blizzards fiddling with the sound engine its both using more resources and at the same time utilising hardware less.

[Kalos]

he doesnt have a soundcard, he has onboard sound, i.e. a chip on the motherboard that acts like a limited soundcard, when that chip is taxed beyond its limits the computers CPU takes over and does all the work, and because of blizzards fiddling with the sound engine its both using more resources and at the same time utilising hardware less.
Combine that with the fact that it was made by a company known for medicroty, enter VIA, it's not just an onboard sound solution, it's an onboard sound solution made by the guys who have done a mavellous job of screwing up in the past. See thier chipsets, or thier raid controllers. I can't think of anything of quality, real initiative from them. It's all half assed, and comes up with all sorts of rubbish.

Heck, only five weeks ago I was tearing my hair out with a VIA raid controller on my own desktop, my older one from 2004, as it had suddenly developed an idea overnight that somehow, it was now apart of a raid, dispite there being only one harddrive in this perticular machine. Coupled onto this strange fact is that it kept on detecting a failure in the none existent raid system, rather amazing in fact, seeing flaws in hadware that doesn't exist. Anyhow, it proceeded to block me from even getting through the BIOS screens, endlessly restarting no matter what option was tried.

End the end, popped open the case. Removed the mobo end of the SATA cable from one of the raid controller's ports and onto the other. Tada, suddenly everything was fine, it forgot all about the supposed raid, and acted like it had for months before. That's only the tip of the iceberg, but I'm not getting into the Athlon XP days with VIA. More painful, I assure you.

VIA are absolute rubbish. At least Intel's onboard work is stable. VIA managed to get down instability and inadequacy in one single product, simply fabulous. No doubt, it's plain to see, I don't think much of VIA or thier products, makes the title of Second Rate seem like a prize. For me, down with Sparkle for sheer lack of functionality.

I would replace the sound portion with something like a USB key, they make little sound cards in those. Not high quality ones, but can't do much worse than a 'quality' brand like VIA's work.

[WatcherZero]

Ive always used VIA, for two reasons, Best driver support of any motherboard manufacturer, and its always been 100% reliable with me, not a single conflict, bug or issue, I do however have a policy of always using Soundcards and disabling Onboard audio.

As to this Envy24, dont know why via has stopped using realtek which its used for donkeys years

[swaldman]

To be honest, if the hearsay that I heard that they'd moved all of the sound processing into software is true, then even if it is the sound causing the slowdown I wouldn't expect it to be the soundcard that is the bottleneck :-(

Anyway, enough whining from me, looks like there's nothing much I can do about it...

[Tunga]

I remember when every VIA USB controller in production had a horrible problem with not providing enough power to USB devices. This crashed my (then) USB modem randomly for ages until I worked it out and fixed it with a PCI USB card. As Kalos say this wasn't an isolated incident. After that I'll never touch VIA again!

[WatcherZero]

Not vias fault, problem with the USB standard, they provide a fixed percentage (think its 11 volts?) between the USB slots, if you have power hungry usb devices they can actually drain so much theirs not enough for other USB devices to use, tis why you should spread around any power hungry USB devices between the motherboard and any PCI card.

[Tunga]

No, it was VIA's fault, their controllers weren't meeting the standard, it was a well know problem at the time (as I found out).