Stuttering Revisited, please help!

[SoulIntake]

Sorry to bring back an old topic but... Half-Life 2 just keeps hitching, i.e. slowing down, pausing, whatever fairly often, almost every turned corner, (this isn't just autosaves!) and not too long, but enough to not be "smooth." The sound sort of stutters as well a bit when this happens. I have all the updates for this software on Steam, I have tried the mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 1 and 0. I have tried all different quality settings from low to high and in different resolutions with no improvement. Reinstalling and installing all my drivers for vid and sound card and used drivercleaner. I tinkered around a little with Half-Life 2 when it first came out on my old comp which had a 9800pro in it and I remembered it being fairly perfect playing on it. Now my new computer: p4 3.2 800fsb, OCZ 2.0GB (2x1.0GB sticks) ddr400 2-3-2-5, asus p4c800-e deluxe, 2 Seagate 7200rpm 8mb cache in a 2+0 raid striping, audigy 2 platinum, VisionTek x850 XT PE, 22'' mitsubishi diamond pro, XP media center edition 2005 w/ sp2. All the newest drivers, cat 5.10's, newest creative OpenAL drivers, updated bios, fixed windows paging file to static 512MB, defragmented hard drives after installing Half-Life 2, setup latencies to match 2-3-2-5 in Bios for recommended memory timings. Well as you can see my computer is enough to play Half-Life 2 smoothly or one would think. But, it actually worked better on my 2400 athlon and 9800 pro with 1.0GB of corsair xms memory. Also, I have ran memetest and prime95 overnight with no errors or warnings. I have a 500 watt Zalman power supply. What gives guys??? Its totally ruining the ingame immersion and this is a great game, i'd love to play it smooth. Please forgive me if I missed something earlier in this forum that fixed this problem.... I've been trying to fix this for hours and hours, and all of my other games work perfect btw... :angry: Thanks- SOUL

 

[Beerdude26]

audigy 2 platinum

Audigy's sometimes create serious problems with HL2. Try taking it out and playing it with onboard sound.

 

[^Ben]

Juding by your lack of paragraphs, i'm goign to take a wild guess and say you should not be allowed near a PC.

Consoles should be much more easier for you to understand.

 

[Beerdude26]

Juding by your lack of paragraphs, i'm goign to take a wild guess and say you should not be allowed near a PC.

Consoles should be much more easier for you to understand.

How about you don't be a ****. He understands more of his computer than you think, seeing as he at least knows what's in his computer and can give very specific information about it.

Post helpful things or post non-offencive reactions or just don't post at all.

 

[^Ben]

No

...

 

[SoulIntake]

LOL :cheese: I do play consoles as well hahaha> nothing usually goes wrong so where is the fun :rolling: anyways do you remember where you heard about audigy's creaing problems for this because thats kind of a bummer, also my last comp used this same sound card as well and didn't have probs. Is there a way in the command line or game to have it preload or cache all the sounds beforehand? Thanks for the help- Soul

 

[Beerdude26]

Here are some standard troubleshooting tips :
Link 1
Link 2 (Turning off sound may help)
Link 3

Validating your copy of HL2 may also help : steam://validate/220

 

[SoulIntake]

Hmmmm, what's this mean, I went to validate it, and it got to 72, then skipped back to 60, then finished to 100 normal. Once it got back to the main screen it is updating it from 93%??? It always said 100 percent ready! Was something wrong with it?

 

[SoulIntake]

It must be a pretty thick update too, because its taking awhile even at 240 Kb/s.

 

[Beerdude26]

Hmmmm, what's this mean, I went to validate it, and it got to 72, then skipped back to 60, then finished to 100 normal. Once it got back to the main screen it is updating it from 93%??? It always said 100 percent ready! Was something wrong with it?

Oh, forgot about that
Is your copy completely updated? (To check, RMB on Steam icon in tray --> Games --> My Games --> Check if it's 100%

 

[SoulIntake]

Yeah it always said 100%- ready. Now when I just went to validate it like you said it did as above and when done it wento update it starting at 92% and now its done, was their corrupt game files? Okay- I just tried the game again... nothing new same old problems still Gosh ive done everything even my card is plugged in the 3rd out of 5 slots for the sound card.) I forgot how to check for IRQ conflicts though, anybody know? And would drivers other than creatives for my card work better???

 

[Beerdude26]

I forgot how to check for IRQ conflicts though, anybody know? And would drivers other than creatives for my card work better???

It's not specifically for Creative Sound Cards, but it comes close : Link
This should get you in the window where you check IRQ conflicts.
As for alternative drivers, try checking this link : Alternative Drivers
Click the link in the first post and it should get you to the homepage.

And have you tried removing the card and tried to play with onboard sound as I suggested ?

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

No

...

Yes.

...

 

[SoulIntake]

Okay an update as to what ive done and havent done: First of all I went to system information to check for IRQ conflicts. I found that my Audigy 2 was sharing the same IRQ with my RAID HD Controller. DOH! So I changed slots on my motherboard to give it its' own IRQ address. Did it help? Well, Call of Duty has always gotten extremely stuttery in multiplayer like 200 fps drop to 12 feeling, when more than 5 people are having a shoot out- i thought that was normal because older engine and I didnt have probs with any other games till HL2- now its nearly perfectly smooth in EAX3 mode. Though I can still notice a performance hit in that game with EAX3 turned on vs. miles 2d software sound. Is this normal? I thought this card was supposed to boost performance not drop it over software sound esp. in EAX3 mode. I changed pci latency to 32 from 64 in bios and video latency via ATiTool to 64 from 255. Turned paging file off in win. Things are a bit smoother now esp. in Call of Duty but Half-life 2 is only mariginally better, its still pretty bad actually, I was really hopeful after the change in Call of duty . I still feel like theres room for improvement in my sound card though, esp. after call of duty experience> software mode is def. faster than EAX3 mode, which feels weird it gives such a performance hit. Well enjoy the latest paragraph :cheers: id buy you all a round if i knew ya thanks- soul