Sound Blaster Series & Hardware Acceleration Question

[guptasa1]

Hey guys,
I'm a bit puzzled by this. I'm running a Sound Blaster Audigy card (though I hear with the Live! series this is also the case) and also Windows XP. Certain games (especially the cinematics, but I believe it applies in-game as well) stutter and have odd audio (and video) pauses in certain areas. I've noticed this in a few games, and after some research, found the solution was to go into the Audio Properties in Control Panel and turn Hardware Acceleration for DirectSound from Full to Basic (two settings down) or off all together. For a while, I kept switching these back and forth to play the game and then back for regular Windows tasks, but lately I've just left it on Basic. I'm using the latest drivers, and I'm wondering a few things. First of all, does anyone know why hardware acceleration would degrade performance instead of improve it? And secondly, does anyone know what I lose with Basic Acceleration instead of Full? I haven't noticed any negative performance difference in anything (Winamp, games, etc.) thus far, and in fact from what I can tell things seem to be greatly improved in games. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Shaun

 

[Mem]

Using Audigy here with no problems on full hardware acceleration,did you try moving the Audigy to a different PCI slot,this can sometimes improve stability and performance.

 

[guptasa1]

Hey there,
Well, it's not all games. Just some of them. Two examples are Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the Star Trek Armada. In both of those titles, ony the movie files (specifically the intro movies, but it could be others) are affected. I'm not sure yet if any in-game stuttering is at all related, but the FAQ for those games on their support site specifically say to do that for Creative Labs cards (change to basic acceleration). The card works perfectly in Full Acceleration mode for pretty much everything else, so I really don't think the slot has anything to do with it (though I haven't moved them). That's why I'm curious to find out what the difference is.

Thanks,
Shaun