COD4 and X-Fi Extreme Gamer soundcard

No issues with COD4 MP, no stuttering or interrupted connections, until this weekend. I replaced my Extreme Audio soundcard with the Extreme Gamer soundcard and now I get stuttering and Connection Interrupted after anything between 5 and 30 minutes of play. I don't see why a new soundcard could cause these issues - anybody else seen anything like this? I'm using XP SP2 and using the Asus P5K-E's onboard WiFi, which I've had no issues with so far. After the soundcard install I updated online, and I also stop every process/service I can (including firewall/antivirus) before starting COD4.

Any help or suggestions?

Cheers,
Dave

put the old one back and try. could be isp issues? stuttering as in sound or stuttering as in fps. or movement stuttering. could just be lag. try with the old card for a while and play some online on the same servers if you can. gotta keep all the variables constant.

Thanks, will try the old card again tonight. Was hoping not to have that hassle, but got to rule it out I suppose.

yea,
also what isp are you on? just to see if its having a problem.

BTInternet - I will check.

Maybe something to do with your new hardware not being properly verified? Or something along those lines. make sure you install the new drivers, and remove the old card's drivers.

Hi

I know on Vista (I see you're using XP) that the Xtreme Audio and Xtreme Gamer have different drivers.

Have you tried uninstalling the Xtreme Audio drivers rebooting, then install the Xtreme Gamer ones, rather than doing the auto update on the Creative site?

Thanks for suggestions on re-installing drivers, ensuring old one properly removed. Didn't help the stuttering but did sound much better afterwards!

Stab in the dark, but it could be PCI latency problems with the new card. My old rig used to have an AGP graphics card, and had to do some playing with that and the sound cards PCI latency to get stutter free sound when I used XP.

I suspect though that you've got a PCIe grahics card, but you could still play with the PCI latency of the sound card.

You can download a PCI latency tuning program here:

PCI Latency Tool 3.1 v2 download from Guru3D.com

You can find all sorts of pointers on it by searching Google for 'PCI latency'.

Thanks for all the suggestions, now got the problem resolved. It turned out to be something I did a couple of weeks ago but only started giving me problems last weekend. I'd upgraded my Netgear router (DG834GT) firmware to 1.02.13 and it seems like it is a bit crap! I downgraded to 1.02.09 on Friday evening and the problem went away - played three hours with no issues. Just to be sure, after another couple of problem-free hours of COD4 on Saturday I put the 1.02.13 firmware back on, and within ten minutes the stuttering and interrupted connections were back. Revert to 09 and fine again!

Cheers,
Dave

P.S. Soundcard is plain PCI - what does PCI latency tuning do for me? Can't check the link until I get home since gaming sites are blocked from work.