[Chainblade]

ya well my computer hasn't been updated since 2002. it's still decent though. P4 3Ghz. 2GB ram. i got vista and it runs great with ultimate. however, audio in games suck now. the sound is sluggish and it is scratchy sometimes. it slows down the game.

so i thought to myself, well i'm using the built in sound on the mobo so I put in a dedicated sound card that i had in an old computer. nothing special. made by mad dog that I got a couple years ago. I installed that and it was a little better but still choppy.

i'm sure half of it is driver related since the driver for it is old (like 2005) and there is is not an update. so I think I should upgrade my sound card to a fully vista compatible one. I'm sure that will help a lot, don't you think? what would you recommend? I use headphones to play games and I listen to music on another computer so I don't need anything super high end. The cheaper the better.

Also, my computer has a Geforce FX5500 w/128MB vram. i might upgrade that too while I"m at it. My computer just has AGP so what is a good upgrade for it? I'd prefer not to have to spend more than $100 on the video card.

Thanks guys!

[MSP]

Focus on the video card. The audio stuttering and crap you're hearing is your CPU stressing out. If you were to watch your performance monitor during the audio problems you would see CPU spikes. A Creative X-Fi would lighten the CPU load as well, but a nice Nvidia 7800 or higher would probably resolve it entirely.

[ivanolo]

Newegg.com - EVGA 256-A8-N542-T2 GeForce 7600GS 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
Newegg.com - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail

[Chainblade]

hmm you really think it's the video card?

I just tested some of my other games and they run fine with the sound and everything so it's really just with WoW (of course the one game I play the most...).

[-Sevendust-]

Try a sound card. Its the cheapest fix.

[MSP]

No matter what an Nvidia 5500 is WAY below the minimum of what you should be PC gaming with. My buddy has a 5500 and complains of lots of games running like ass.

[Chainblade]

ya i think i'll try a video card first. it's been a pretty good card actually. i have been able to play WoW at 1024x768 no prob with it. Of course that's with XP. However, some newer games have troubles even with lower resolution. hopefully upgrading the video card will fix the problem.

[mistawiskas]

You can get an old sound card working in Vista? I sure as heck can't. My belovwed SB live! won't work as it's not going to get any vista drivers. I can get it to work with a third party driver, but it doesn't work well. I'm heading towards an 8800GTS for my graphics card..;. the prices are falling and around X-mas they'll reqall be down there as that's when the 9xxx series is due for release.

[Chainblade]

ya the sound card is a mad dogg prowler or something. some crap i got at officemax over 2 years ago. it seems to work fine in vista, except for in wow. it uses c-media drivers for it. i'm surprised a sb live doesn't have proper vista drivers. would you guys recommend nvidia over ati now a days? it seems that in my price range of around $100 or so the X1650Pro or the 7600GS are my best choices.

[Sparky]

Best sound card that I know of that's not $200+ dollars.

I miss mine terribly. We had a power surge here that wasn't so friendly to my PCI devices. I should probably pick up a new one. I bought it a few years ago at the recommendation of a former forum member (can't remember his name, but he was really smart).

Edit: IT WAS ESUN! Thank you wayback machine.