Lowering Audio Acceleration
Level
In
some Applications/Games you can significantly improve audio quality (Reducing
audio artifacts, or stuttering) by lowering the Hardware Acceleration
level for your soundcard. This can be a result of poor Windows 2000 WDM drivers
or just an Application/Game issue. You should only really try this if you
experience such irregular audio playback in Applications/games which updating
your drivers/installing any relevant patches didn’t fix.
Click
on Start, Settings, then Control Panel. Open the Sounds
& Multimedia applet. Select the Audio tab & then hit the Advanced
button for Sound Playback. Now select the Performance tab.
Move
the Hardware acceleration slider 1 or 2 notches to the Left (Standard/Basic
Acceleration). You might also want to try moving the Sample rate
conversion quality slider to the middle notch (Improved sample rate
converter). NOTE – In some games this can also improve performance,
Giants: Citizen Kabuto is one game in particular which has been known to improve
frame rates a lot when this is done.
Remember
this should only really be seen as a temporary solution to your audio problems.
The real issue is with either your drivers or with the Application/game
in question.
Application/Game
performance
There
are quite a few things you can do to improve Application/Gaming Performance with
Windows 2000. For starters you should have the latest patches for your games
installed. These can fix many game bugs, other incompatibilities with Windows
2000 or just improve performance. Of particular importance
would be to have DirectX
8.0A installed, which can improve performance in many games.
Check 3DFiles
for the latest game patches available.
Power
User
The
first thing you should do in Windows 2000 is Add a User intended for
gaming. Many of you are probably just logging in as Administrator by default as
there are no restrictions on what you can do. That said, the Administrator is
running extra features that aren’t needed, but will lower system resources as
a result, thus reducing performance. Being a Power User is perhaps the
best trade-off for this reason.
Click
on Start, Settings, Control Panel then select Users and
Passwords. Tick the Users must enter………. to use this
computer box if the Users section is greyed out.
Select
Add & enter in your desired name & password as required. Now to
select what type of user you wish to add.
Select
Other & using the drop down menu select Power User. Power User
has many advantages over the other types of users as it uses fewer services than
others, e.g. Administrator & has fewer restrictions than others, e.g.
Standard Users.
Select
Finish to complete the addition of the new user. Now whenever you wish to
play games you should logon as this Power User for optimal game performance.
