Hi, yesterday I installed a new mainboard, installed Vista & drivers, installed Need For Speed: Undercover and tried to play it, but it doesn't run as I would have expected. First off, a brief description of the system I'm talking about: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (running at stock speed, properly cooled) ASUS P5K-SE (latest Intel Chipset, Realtek Sound, Marvell Network drivers) 2GB RAM nVIDIA GeForce 8600GT (ForceWare 180.48, had to mod inf) Toshiba 100GB HDD, 2.5" 5400rpm SATA (yup, the old motherboard shredded the old HDD) The problems are not limited to NFS:UC, otherwise I would've posted in the games forum. Looking at the NFS:UC website (which contains a ridiculously CPU hungry flash animation), the sound pops and crackles as soon as I look around. Other sound (such as Winamp) crackles as well while the CPU is at 100% load. It got a bit better when I installed the latest Realtek HD Audio driver (r2.09), but it's still far from perfect. NFS:UC is a good example though; it runs pretty slowly (I have to set medium to low detail in 1280x1024 NoAA NoAF), and I read it should run with high detail on my GPU. And even then, most of the time it doesn't run well (below 20fps), with each keyboard input lagging for about half a second (more with higher visual details) and the sound crackling occasionally. What's funny is that after changing something (e.g. Alt-Tab'bing to Windows and setting CPU Core Affinity to only one core), it runs smoothly for a little while (a few seconds, less than a minute), then it goes back to stuttering, lagging and crackling again. I do not think it's the HDD because I believe that would look differently (zero-fps drops as opposed to lagging and fps slowdown). Wrong ATA mode popped into my mind, but it's SATA - is the anything similar with SATA?
You don't have a Creative sound card, right? What's your PSU (make, model and wattage)? Might sound a bit like a PSU issue.
Nope, no Creative, I'm using onboard audio (Realtek HD Audio). The PSU is a Nitrox IT-7600SG with 600W.
That PSU is certainly sh*te, if it isn't the cause of the current problem now it could well be in the future. A Corsair VX450 should be more than enough for your needs. When it comes to PSUs, get a good brand first and then get enough wattage. Sh*tty brands often produce nothing like the power that they claim.
I've heard nothing but good about the Hiper 630M as well (Plus it's less stressed on wattage output so should last longer, in theory) To be honest I'd check it's not your mobo, try playing it on another mptherboard (same specs otherwise) and see if it makes any difference
Check the HD, i just had this exact same problem with a SATA drive. If you go to Device Manager check the IDE Controllers (i know you have SATA but trust me on this one) check to see if the drive is running in PIO only mode. If it is, try resetting it to DMA. here is a link to further fix the issue. http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=125165
Try changing the default format of the onboard sound - with my mobo the Realtek onboard chip defaults to 24bit sound with 48000hz sampling rate - the sound chip isnt doing the work - its the CPU and yes I get regular distortion and breakup in the sound. Dropping the format to 16bit 44100hz reduces the load but still gives good clear sound - an audiophile could tell the diferance but then an audiophile would use a decent dedicated sound card.
