Choppy Sound

[lehbird]

I just purchased a Dell B110 Dimension 2.53 mhz processor, 1 GB Ram, and am using on board sound and video.

Graphically, everything looks great. However, every 20 seconds or so the sound will lock up or be choppy for a breif period. (say 3-4 sec.)

Is this something that would be corrected by a sound card, video card, both or neither?

Thanks.

[noell]

This may help:

Your system is toward the low end of the scale these days for running FS9 so make sure you aren't trying the run with the FS9 settings near the high end of their ranges.

The first thing to try in FS9 Settings is to go to the Sound section and place the Sound Quality slider to Medium or Low.

Assuming you have DirectX 9.0c installed (if not get it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx and install it), click Start>Run, type "dxdiag" (without the quotes) and hit enter. Select the "Sound" tab. Move the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" slider to the "Basic acceleration" position. If that doen't help, try the lowest position "No acceleration".

If those two things don't help, leave the Sound Quality at low in FS9 and at "Basic Acceleration" in DirectX. Then open FS9 Settings and go to the Display section. Play around with lowering the settings in each of the Tabs (Scenery, Aircraft, Weather and Hardware). Hopefully by doing this you will lessen your processor/graphics loading and come up with an optimized system setting.

As for adding a sound card or video card, I'm not sure this would help or, in the case of adding a video card, even if it is possible. In the specifications I was able to find for your system, I see the sytem has 3 available PCI slots. That means you should be able to add a sound card which may help as it would take some load away from your processor. As for a video card addition though, are you sure you can even add one? Again, the specs I found says the system has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 video chipset. That being the case, it would mean your system does not have a PCI Express slot (you would need the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 915G video chipset for PCI Express support). You could, I suppose add a PCI video card (if you could find one) but I don't think that would be any better than the integrated graphics you already have. IMO, your processor is really the limiting factor. Therefore, a video card addition of any kind would likely result in little or no FS9 performance improvement.


....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego) @ 2.5Ghz
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ DDR400 CL2
BFG 7800GTX OC (256MB) @ 460/1300MHz
OCZ PowerStream 520W
SB Audigy Gamer
SATA HDDs:
36GB WD Raptor (X2; RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar

[RyanbATC]

Hi, we are in the same boat, I have (my wife has I mean) a Dell 2.2GHz P4, 1GB RAM, and onboard intel 82845 chipset graphics and sound. Recently I purchased a C-media CMI8738 6 channel sound card and it sounds a lot better than my intel onboard sound (I'm using logitech X-530's 5.1 surround). However, I would not recommend the C-media card, even though I got it for only 15 bucks...it took me FOREVER to make the card work with WinXP!! Basically, we're stuck with our crappy computers. Don't waste your money on a PCI video card either - I already tried that, the card performed WORSE than my onboard 82845 graphics chipset LOL!! If you have money, I would shoot for an older SB card like an Audigy 2 etc and hopefully your system has an AGP port, so you could get the radeon x800 or GF6800 AGP version...I'd only recommend doing both of those if you ARE NOT planning on upgrading your entire PC within the next 1-2 yrs

:)

Oh, also, did you try going to your sound card's web site and downloading your latest sound drivers? That helped for me at first

[noell]

AGP may not be an option for David either. The specs on the system make no mention of an AGP slot. I further suggest before purchasing any cards for the Dell Dimension B110, it would be best to call Dell to find out exactly what the system supports in the way of upgrades.

....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego) @ 2.5Ghz
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ DDR400 CL2
BFG 7800GTX OC (256MB) @ 460/1300MHz
OCZ PowerStream 520W
SB Audigy Gamer
SATA HDDs:
36GB WD Raptor (X2; RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar

[lehbird]

Noell:

I actually did add a video card in one of my PCi slots last night. Cann't say it measurably improve4d anything but it didn't hurt.

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the slide4rs or resolution. I've reduced everything to bear minimums with no improvement.

Why I'm so confused is my previous system (Compaq)only had a 1 Ghz processor w/ 512 MB RAM and I ran FS 9, with the sliders down some what, very well.

[noell]

I'm puzzled as well as to why the 1GHz Compaq ran FS9 better than your 2.53GHz Celeron.

You did try the DirectX suggestion, right?

If everything else is running fine on your system, that would indicate you don't have any system problems. That being the case, I hate to say it but, I'm out of ideas on this one. Hopefully someone else has some suggestions.

....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego) @ 2.5Ghz
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ DDR400 CL2
BFG 7800GTX OC (256MB) @ 460/1300MHz
OCZ PowerStream 520W
SB Audigy Gamer
SATA HDDs:
36GB WD Raptor (X2; RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar

[RyanbATC]

Well since he has PCI slots, he could put in a SB Audigy card...but really it wouldn't be worth it...saving up for a new system would be worth it. Oh, by the way, I'm sorry you have a Celeron, we used to have an Intel Celeron 533MHz...oh boy, it was horrible!!! I think the older Pentium 266MHz etc were faster than it lol!!

[WB_KWVI]

On-board Video Chips are great for just about everything except gaming, in fact if you don't do gaming most likely you don't need a graphics card. On-board sounds chips are fine as well for the most parts. We have have a come long ways these past few years, the low end pc today were the high end machines less than a decade ago.


Back to your problem.

Before you run FS check dxdiag as suggested here already..

start >> run >> dxdiag

if files are ok and sounds tests are good then proceed

start >> run >> taskmgr

(cntl alt del) at the same time works too.

Performance Window

Check memory PF Usage should be about 500 mb or less and cpu no more than 10% usage.

=========

Now start FS use setup defaults (reset)

CPU usage will be near or at 100% but don't worry about it! Even when paused it takes "free" cpu cycles.

I have a Dell similar to yours and frame rates aren't great but on-board sound is just fine..

Check your fame rates (shift z) you should be at or near 15-30 fps just sitting on the runway.

Less then 10 fps you likely have problems.

I think I had a problem as you described once before I just uninstalled FS, reinstalled directx then reinstalled FS.

Without a AGP or PCI E+16 slot there isn't a lot you can do.. other than swap out mb. Lot of work usually not worth it.


Good luck..