St ..st..st...st ... oh for goodness sake

(eq-Shrike) #1

Well after some hardware changes the stutter effect I am experiencing with ET every time a sound file (ie. announcer messages) is played is somewhat less but still annoyingly there …

I have increased soundmegs , set sound quality to low and raised the priority of the ET process all without much sucess…

Setup is

Alienware 51m7700
HD is Fujitsiu Travelstar 7200 rpm
Sound is Audigy2 PCMCIA
1 gig RAM
Geforce Go 6800

I have had some advice from you lovely peeps but am curious about a few other possibilities and would appreciate your feedback …

  • Booting in safe mode with networking and seeing if the problem still exists. Would this tell me if it is a driver issue or hardware issue ?
  • Is there any way to disable the announcer ? cg_novoicechats 1 only turns off player voice chats
  • Would changing any of the following cvars help ?

seta s_volume “0.270833”
seta s_musicvolume “0.635417”
seta s_separation “0.5”
seta s_doppler “1”
seta s_khz “11”
seta s_mixahead “0.2”
seta s_mixPreStep “0.05”
seta s_defaultsound “0”
seta s_wavonly “0”
seta com_soundMegs “64”

Pai to anyone who can help me sort this …

Olli

(eq-Shrike) #2

btw - seems to only happen in ET. Other games are fine …

(eq-Shrike) #3

some more info:

I am overclocking the gfx card but reverting back to stock settings makes no difference. The overclocking as such is really only running the card at the speed it can do as the Go6800 stock is shipped underclocked to minimise power consumption. Pfffft gimme fps any day.
Also, when copying ET over from my desktop I just copied the whole folder rather than re-installing. Would that make a differnce ?

(Salteh) #4

when copying ET over from my desktop I just copied the whole folder rather than re-intsalling. Would that make a differnce ?

Doubt it… my D:\rcwet\ has survived quite a few XP installs :o)
It was copied to our other machine too iirc.

You could always try to remove ‘all’ the *.cfg files in your new directory, let ET create new default ones again.

(eq-Shrike) #5

Link is to screenshot that shows the processes commonly runnign when Im playing.
I took the screenshot at work so the ones crossed out are not normally runnign when I’m gaming

http://www.salteh.net/files/temp/processes.jpg

ta

(Englander) #6

So what type of fps do u get on this mean laptop, lets say with 20 players on and at what res/graphics settings do you use?

Looking at laptops to buy myself.

(eq-Shrike) #7

Gah I made a long post but it did not submit …

Anway to recap

  • Havent checked FPS on ET yet
  • Doom3 in High settings gives around 60 fps but I think it caps at 60 so dunno what max is
  • HL2 with all whsitles and bells (4xAA, 8X filtering etc) gives about 50 fps
  • Fracry with everything maxes out playes very smooth (dont know fps)
  • 3dmark 03 is 8500

Olli

(eq-Shrike) #8

One other thing - the service I have received from Alienware UK has been absolutely top notch. I know their notebook and desktop divisions are seperate so I can’t comment on the desktop support , but the notebook support is first class.

I have had 3 issues/questions and have received email replies within a couple of hours from support reps. In each case the issues were resolved very quickly.
PM me with your phone no. if you want and I can answer any other questions …

Olli

(EB) #9

Always copy the post b4 posting when it is long. Actually, I cut it and then paste it back in, that way if it screws me over, I can just re-paste it.

(DG) #10

i take it antivirus is disabled when playing
cg_announcer Toggles the announcer voice on map start (“FIGHT!"), win (Allies win!) etc

(no_shad) #11

have you ran an extended test, like memtest or prime torture yet?

(Nail) #12

have you turned off any conservation modes ?

(DarkangelUK) #13

Why does the name of this thread amuse me so?

(eq-Shrike) #14

Yes antivirus is disabled …
cg_announcer - is this only for the fight and allies win or is it also for the other announcements e.g. when command post is built . As a workaround I can live without this if it solves the problem …

Thnx

(eq-Shrike) #15

Not yet - will do …ta
Since it only happens in ET I suspect it isnt the mem though - I’ll give it a go tho …

(eq-Shrike) #16

cg_novoicehchats 1 ? Yep done that - I get no voicechats and still the stutter when the announcer speaks … not ALL the time but about 75% of the time …

(eq-Shrike) #17

Does it remind you of …

http://groovetown.co.uk/songs/displaysong.php?id=401

:slight_smile:

(leifhv) #18

I assume you have installed the latest driver for your sound card?

-Does your sound card have any properties for sound latency or something like that?

-Try disabeling HW acceleration (run dxdiag and navigate to the ‘Sound’ tab).

-Not too sure about these but


seta s_doppler "0"  
seta s_mixahead "0.3"         //Try 0.15 or 0.25 ...maybe you'll have to do a snd_restart after changing these?

might be worth a try.

(Don’t blame me if your computer explodes and the hotel burns down to the ground though…)

Life

(DarkangelUK) #19

Possibly a sound card/game incompatibility issue? I’ve had that (and still do) with Doom 3. The game just does not lke my sound card at all… Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital. Everytime i play D3 with it, the game crashes after 2 mins. When i disable the soundcard i can play for as long as i want. Tried disabling the soundcard and using onboard sound to see if it does the same?

(SwordOfDamocles) #20

Hiya,

I used to have a sound issue about 7-8 months ago when playing clan matches. My problem was that after a short while of running both ET and a voice communications program (ventrilo), the sound of the voice comms would turn muffled and everyone sounded as if they had turned into frogs.

This only happened after updating my sound drivers. I also had no problems with other games/applications. I solved my problem by not reverting to my old drivers, but waiting a short while until new ones were released again, so basically the update broke what was fine lol. I guess it may be worth checking to see what alternative drivers are out their for your card as I know others who like me had problems with the sound of ET only - everything else withstanding.