Stuttering and severe slow downs solved!

[Greg 0]

The other day I posted in this topic: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....7;st=30

And noted that OFP was unplayable on a 1.3ghz duron with 256mb RAM. That surprised even myself since that is 2x the spec of the machine I first completed OFP on. So I did some investigation and found the culprit was actually the onboard audio for the Jetway 830CH which uses the SiS chipset and is AC97 compatible.

I disabled this audio function in the BIOS as I could not find the device in device manager. Immediately the stuttering and extreme slow frame rates went away.

It took me 4 hours to correctly install a SoundBlaster Live in that machine due to Creative Labs disasterous drivers. If I had a dollar for every crash... Eventually I go the thing working and OFP runs quite well (in my brief test). Please don't think that using a Sound Blaster will solve your problems. The reason I had the card spare was because it was removed from my main system to make it stable.

So folks who are suffering severe slow downs and stuttering, try disabling your sound device in 'Device Manager', and/or in your BIOS and see how you go. It it is the problem, and the only solution is to buy another sound card, please don't buy a Creative Labs product, just take my word (or do a net search) and save yourself much pain and suffering.

Also during my tests I found that the original OFP at reasonable settings is WAY faster than OFP:R even when OFP:R has detail reduced significantly eg. very low terrain, 256x256 textures, 800m view, min visual quality etc. That was a bit sad.

[Dadster 0]

Maybe I'm missing something here but if you disable your sound device in Device Manager don't you lose sound?  

But as for the Soundblaster Live I had to ditch mine to play certain OFP missions.  I would get to a point where the sound would either turn to slow motion or cut off entirely depending on which drivers I was using.  I tried both the generic XP drivers (slow down) and the latest Soundblaster Live drivers (no sound) and nothing would work.  Eventually I bought a new Hercules sound card and have had no problems with any programs since.  

Dadster

[Greg 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Dadster @ 12 May 2003,02:16)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Maybe I'm missing something here but if you disable your sound device in Device Manager don't you lose sound?  

But as for the Soundblaster Live I had to ditch mine to play certain OFP missions.  I would get to a point where the sound would either turn to slow motion or cut off entirely depending on which drivers I was using.  I tried both the generic XP drivers (slow down) and the latest Soundblaster Live drivers (no sound) and nothing would work.  Eventually I bought a new Hercules sound card and have had no problems with any programs since.  

Dadster<span id='postcolor'>

Yep, the point of disabling sound is to troubleshoot if that device/driver is causing slowdowns, or other problems.

Yep, you experienced the same OFP + SBLive "no sound followed by crash" that myself and many others in this forum report.  Since neither BIS, nor Creative Labs are interested in fixing this easily reproducable problem, it's up to you to solve it.  I have discussed this particular problem and the possible solutions in other threads.

[RUSH_2112 0]

yep, if you have a sound card installed, the on-board (motherboard) sound needs to be turned off in bios.

I turned off shadows and set ground detail to very low which makes the game faster.

[berghoff 11]

Maybe you can also set the hardware slider down 'to Emulation Only'

I also have a Live! card and when I got Hardware accel on in the audio menu and when a Shilka shoot, my computer locks up!

Now I got different problems...

[KEVBAZ 0]

annother helpfull tip, which is used in a few games to solve problems is to turn off sound acceleration in dxdiag

start>run> dxdiag > sound tab> acceleration to the lowest setting

[Greg 0]

Turning off HW accel in Windows can help the sblive driver, but it then uses up to 10x more CPU time. Just what we need.. slow the game down some more.

What makes OFP special regarding the SBLive drivers is that the 'shilka' firing sound effect causes a blue screen crash in WinXP. The problem is a combination of OFP and SBLive. OFP does something that driver can't handle. No other sound cards suffer the same problem, and no other games are as unstable as OFP. If we could get rid of, or change the shilka firing sound, we'd eliminate the single biggest SBLive problem. The rest are minor issues, like crackling sounds, incorrect 3D effect on distant sounds etc.

Are you listening BIS? Fix that Shilka sound and make a bunch of SBLive owners happy. Please.

[berghoff 11]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Greg @ 18 May 2003,06:53)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What makes OFP special regarding the SBLive drivers is that the 'shilka' firing sound effect causes a blue screen crash in WinXP.<span id='postcolor'>

Blue screen?

I got very minor slowdowns...

BTW this 'bug' is introduced in 1.75