I must admit, after replying to the graphics card, I began to wonder why
gcards came up...so I looked back. Not to start a flame war or
anything...but...
The current architecture for PCI busses is a throughput of around
~800mb/ps. That has been that way for years, even with the first intel
busses. The newer 66mhz pci slots have a throughput of 1.6gigs or somthing.
AGP is somewhere around 3.2 gigs per sec at 2.x mode. The only cards that
are slowing down a system are ISA cards, and that where your problem may
lay. However, even SB16 cards can handle it all. There is only 1 time i
have had problems with full busses. I had a TNT2 Ultra, a Aureal Superquad
(pci), a Linksys 10bT net card on Ethernet, and the Microsoft MS80 speakers
with are USB (is on PCI bus). All of that filled up the bandwidth, and
would crash GL quake when I would play with many players. I simply took USB
off of the speakers, and it went away. This problem is documented by
Microsoft, and was fixed in SE.
The only thing limiting computers these days are CPU's. A 486 with
32 megs can run Win98SE, I know, because I have one running it. A Matrox
2mb card MORE than handles any 2d applications. As a matter of fact. The
Nvidia GEForce256 is too FAST for all processors, even K7-700mhz, the CPU is
a BOTTLENECK!
If it were my guess, you can check out a few things. First off, I
would need to know what kind of sound card you were using. That can make a
big difference, but even then if you hads a SB16, it should work perfectly.
How much ram do you have? How much is being taken up by extra programs
running in the background? What version of windows are you running? Win95
A and B sometimes loads Dos Compatibility Drivers for hard drives, this can
slow them down by as much as 60%. How much hard drive space do you have
free? If you have less than 100-75 megs, windows does not have enough
memory to use as virtual memory. Why speed is your processor? If it is
below 200 and you are running secondary programs, they can interfere with
MP3 decoding. I know because I had a p200 and when I would do other stuff,
it would skip if I ran a program. Lastly, if you have an OLD version of
windows (A, B, Upgrade) that can be 99% of your problems since these
versions are VERY buggy. You can format and reinstall and I bet you 50 bux
that your problems go away...old windows kernals suck
The only time when you would get pausing is when your hard drive
activity goes into high gear, the hdd is often the weakest point of a
computer. It takes A LOT of stuff to bog a computer down. If you have an
ISA sound card, it will get bogged if your doing a lot of stuff, thats why
you get sound stuttering if you run GL quake...because Magic is right to an
extent, but it takes GIGS of info to stop bus info travel.
Shawn
Shawn M. Pierce
Information and User support specialist
University of Minnesota, College of Agriculture Departments of Plant
Pathology and Agronomy
(612)-301-6034 Day phone
(612)-730-7617 All hours number
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >
(Work mail)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (all other mail)
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Magic
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 5:30 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound
From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 4:33 PM
Subject: MD: "Hesitating" sound
[...]
> What's happening is that every now and then the sound coming from WinAmp
> (but it shows in Liquid Audio too) "hesitates" resulting in a strange
sound,
> like if a bit was lost in the reading process, or like it was read twice.
>
> I've tried re-installing both WinAmp and Liquid Audio with no luck. I've
> also defragmented the hard drive, but the problem remains.
> This has been happening for a couple days, and there has been no
changement
> in my PC configuration, nor I had installed any new program.
>
> Any idea what it can be?
[...]
I'm going to take a rough shot at it being the graphics card. Unless you're
running something less than a P150 you should never have skipping in Winamp.
If you have a P150 or above then even the screensaver should cause much of a
problem - you only need a P166 to use some screensaver plug-ins for WinAmp
that synchronise display with the MP3, so just playing back without anything
else running should be a breeze!
The reason I say the graphics card is simple. In order to squeeze as
much performance as possible from these cards they send just slightly more
data to the card than it can take to try and push it. This results in the
command being left in the data lines until the card is ready for it, meaning
no other card can use those data lines until the graphics card is ready.
Ordinarily this isn't too much of a problem - the chances of you noticing
the printer pausing for a microsecond, or maybe the mouse locking for a very
brief instant, or even the hard disc taking just that millisecond longer to
read a file go pretty much unnoticed. With the sound card though it is
clearly audible when this happens. If you have a WinModem it will be
effected too - many people blame their ISP when they get disconnected, but
actually it's the graphics card breaking communication. The solution is to
nag the b****** off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics cards.
Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."
Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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