Sound is static/stuttering in certain games only....

[EditCross]

I recently just upgraded my Mobo/CPU as well as RAM/PSU. Only hardware I brought over to the new PC was my Hard Drive and Vid card. I'm having issues of certain games (Bioshock,Hellgate:London Demo, Dance Online) having major static/stuttering during all aspects of the games. Other games such as Team Fortress 2/Crysis Demo are not having the issues at all, and everything is perfect. I don't have a sound card, so I'm using onboard. Should I buy a sound card as well?

I'm wondering if this is a software issue with the games themselves, or if it is my system?

Specs:

Mobo : EVGA nVidia 650i Ultra
CPU : Intel Core2 Duo E6750
RAM : Corsair XMS2 2GB
Vid Card : nVidia 7900 GS

 

[Daveskater]

Hello, EditCross, and welcome to Techspot :wave:

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With regards to your problem, have you installed the latest nvidia drivers? Also, are you on windows xp or vista

 

[EditCross]

Profile info updated.

As for the drivers, yes I've installed the latest drivers from nvidia.

Windows XP

 

[Daveskater]

putting in a sound card may take some of the load off of the cpu so it may help, you can pick them up quite cheaply so it may be worth a try

the only other thing i can really thing of is to lower the settings a bit

 

[EditCross]

Lower what settings?

 

[Daveskater]

lower the affected games graphical settings

they may be set a bit high for your system so bringing a few of them down a notch should help

 

[EditCross]

That's the problem, this happens before I even begin gameplay.

The audio is very static filled during the opening menus. And how I can run a game like TF2 with everything on high and have no issues, and run a Crysis demo as well with no issues and yet a game like Bioshock/Hellgate London the sound is awful.

 

[Daveskater]

i see, try opening one of the games and then press ctrl + alt + del to look at the task manager and see how much of the cpu it is using, if it's not the game's process using most of the cpu then let me know what one is (unless it's system idle processes)

try it with one game that is ok and another that isn't

it could be a software conflict between the game and another running process so that would cause it to slow down and stutter

 

[EditCross]

CPU usage for Hellgate:London = 4%?

CPU usage for TF2 = 9%

I guess that's what you're asking for?

 

[Daveskater]

that's exactly it

they're both pretty low usages so they're ok, however double click on the CPU column to sort the processes by the amount of cpu that they're using (in descending order) and see what is using the most cpu - there may be something using up 80 or 90%

 

[EditCross]

System Idle Process - 99