Question about EAX and System Preformace with UT 2003

[Kamikaze2499]

here is the problem. when i'm playing UT 2003 and under the audio options i have the sound set for HARDWARE + EAX the game momentarily pauses (VERY ANNOYING!!!) i changed the setting to HARDWARE controlled and still the same problem. next i tried SAFE MODE and the pauses went away....so far so good. i tried setting it to SOFTWARE controlled and the game played just as it did under the SAFE MODE setting (note these are under the audio options, the game was started in regualr mode, NOT safe mode)

so i've come the conclusion that the running the sound card under any type of HARDWARE mode cause the game to lag quite often. my system specs are on my sig.

Are there any drivers that fix this? i have a great sound card and i've been to creative's website and looked everywhere and all i see is a driver that says "N/A for SP1 users". i really don't want to play it on software mode cause i don't want the software doing anymore than it has to when i have a perfectly good EAX sound card that should be more than adequet.

any suggestions? oops my sig say 2K Pro but im now using Win XP Pro

[DilLy]

This is a known problem between Creative cards (especially Audigy's) and UT2003. Creative is supposedly trying to get thier drivers up to date to resolve these type of issues.

Note that unless your card supports EAX 3.0 or higher, hardware sound wont work the way it's supposed to. Not that that's the reason for poor performance with hardware sound enabled, its just that the game only supports EAX 3.0 and higher.

There supposedly is no performance decrease in the game if you enable Hardware 3-d sound with a Santa Cruz card (Voyetra makes those). Those are very nice cards, if you ever upgrade the sound on your machine I suggest you look at the Santa Cruz boards.

For now I suggest you use Software 3-d sound, it is still pretty good, and zero performance loss. Until Creative gets better drivers out anyway...

By the way, safe mode kinda sucks becasue there is a noteable lag in the sounds. For instance you fire your gun and a half second later the sound emits, it jsut doesn't feel right and should only be used to trouble shoot your sound problems. Use software sound instead.