Gaz,
I can tell you right now. It is NOT the dos mode drivers. I know it.
The SB emu drivers are ONLY for dos, nothing else. Everything else accesses
the card directly, not through the emu drivers. The problem with dos games
is they cannot directly access the pci bus with PCI sound cards. So an emu
driver needs to be created, since SB16 IS THE STANDARD in drivers for old
dos stuff, that is the one they program it after. Your program will not
access these drivers, it doesn't even get close. It accesses probably
DirectSound (the sound part of DirectX). Thus it does not touch the compat
emu drivers...trust me on this one. I have had many different PCI cards.
It used to be older cards such as the original Monster Sound wich was the
FIRST PCI sound card, had REALLY sucky dos emu drivers, and it would hardly
ever work. BUT, it would work BEAUTIFULLY in windows.
I just thought of another thing. What version of DirectX do you have?
If you are using new drivers, they can be optimized for DirectX7, and not an
older version. Download version7 if you do not have it...its 6.8 or so
megs.
Its all about system hardware compatibility with software. I have seen
hardware that hated with things close to it. I had to play card shuffel for
6 days with my current setup, and I FINALLY got it working. In the 7 years
I have been doing hardware stuff, I have found computers to be more
baffeling than even women :).
Again, that emu driver is ONLY for dos programs. If you are running
ANY window based program, it will NOT require it. It will either directly
address the soundcard. OR it will use the DirectX system calls. I love
programming stuff these days, I dont have to write sound card drivers for
games, all I have to write are directx calls. I write small programs for my
portfolio. I may only be 21, but I am WAY ahead of the game.
There is in fact the Athlon 700 out now, it can be had for around 690
bux. VERY hard to find, but that didn't stop me from finding one, if I
wanted it that is. The 800 will be out in Jan or so according to my friend.
1ghz+ will be out before second quarter 2000 :). Some nice stuff comming
out. Intel has pushed up its new processor, the "whilhemitte" (I cant
remember exact spelling), which is a TOTALLY new core (not P6 3 year old
core which P2,3 is based on). That will hit 1.1ghz also by second Q 2000.
AMD put the screws to intel, and intel responded by upping the date of the
next gen processor by 8 months :).
Shawn
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of PrinceGaz
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 12:14 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound
> From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> The reason why you get stuttering sound can be for a few reasons.
> First, the CPU can be busy because of hard drive activity. When you run
an
> IDE hdd at full choke, newer ones take up to 40% of the CPU power, older
> ones take up even more, upwards of 70%. Add into that CD-roms, and such,
> and you get MANY problems. Thats why I use Scsi stuff, a 40x IDE cd-rom
> utilizes upwards to 40% CD power, whereas my Plextor 40x UltraScsi uses
> around 3%.
Well there is no HDD activity when I'm running the prog (ZX32 - a Spectrum
Emulator). But the sound stutters-- I'll dig out that ReBirth RB-338 to
check
it's minimum refresh time. After sleeping on the card, not literally, I'm
now
convinced its the Creative SB16 emulation driver thingy you find in System
-> Creative... area of Control Panel thats the prob. Its not a direct
access
DirectX device.
> ***************The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
> it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
> stuttering*************.
But if the same prog ran fine with an old SB16, even a P75 CPU as against
my current K6-3/400 at full framerate, why should it fail now other than the
above reason. I can guarantee the Spectrum emu I run needs a DirectX direct
link. I tried playing Doom in DOS mode and it worked like a dream. Thats
simultaneous MIDI music and sampled sounds thro' the SB16 emulation.
> If you look at benchmarks, Framerates scale to the power of the CPU up
to
> a point. That point is the polygon or triangle output of a video card, a
> CPU finally is powerfull enough to send enough data to overwhelm a video
> card...BUT it does not start stuttering it only tops out at frame rates.
I
> would say the GEForce256 will top out with a K7-800 or so.
Errm, is anything faster than an Athlon 600 available? I assume thats the
chip
you mean by a K7, yeah Shawn?
> PS. Who the hell has a 32k video card? Considering vid cards have
upwards
> of 64 megs of ram now. What fills that much ram? Not windows or winamp
> decoding!?!
Peeps with 15yr old PCs, where the video memory is in the B000-B7FF region?
In other words machines that would be worth more selling to the local museum
than a second hand store :-)
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