Stuttering sound in HL 2. A solution

[Lifeform38]

I just thought I should share some information I gathered about how I successfully removed all video and audio stuttering from Half-life 2 where all other attempts had failed. After installing the latest ATI catalyst drivers (4.11 11/10/04)

I set my display card as follows in the "Graphic settings/3D" section

Standard settings - Use custom settings

Anti-Aliasing - Let the application decide

Anisotropic filtering - Let the application decide

Catalyst A.I - High

Mipmap detail level - High Performance

TRUEFORM - Quality

Smartshader - None

And here is the setting that stopped the sound stutter. Everything I did in the game, including lower quality settings, lower resolution had no effect either. None of the helpful hints about changing the HL 2 config file, or lowering the hardware acceleration in windows worked either.

In the API Specific - Direct3D settings - Tick the "Support DXT texture formats", and leave the other settings in the API Specific window un-ticked.

PC setup

P4C800-E Deluxe

3.2Ghz P4

1GB Duel channel

280GB SATA HD

ASUS ATI RADEON 9800XT

Creative Audigy 2 soundcard

I hope this helps at least some of you get the game running as it should. I can now run the game will all the settings in the game at MAX, without any problems

 

[Gollan]

This setting will disable the use of DirectX compressed textures, effectively reducing the amount of textures that can be loaded into video memory. If this solves the stuttering problem then I wonder if turning down game settings that reduce texture quality would have the same effect?

 

[Lifeform38]

Even on the "Low" texture quality setting in the game, I could not remove the stutter on my system. With the resolution at its lowest, it was still there. This was the only thing that worked for me. I was at the poit by then that I was ready to try anything

 

[MeanWhile]

This setting will disable the use of DirectX compressed textures, effectively reducing the amount of textures that can be loaded into video memory. If this solves the stuttering problem then I wonder if turning down game settings that reduce texture quality would have the same effect?

"In the API Specific - Direct3D settings - Tick the "Support DXT texture formats", and leave the other settings in the API Specific window un-ticked"

He says TICK it, not un-tick it. He's not disabling it, he's enabling it, get it?

And to the one who started this thread, that option is already ticked by default when you install the driver.

This is no solution, glad it helped you, but many others are also running 4.11 and having that ticked (as it is by default) but they still have problems.