Odd solution

[scratch]

This is a bit OT, because it's utterly non-Linux, but seeing as this is the
most knowledgable UT2K crew around, I thought I'd bend the rules for a quick
question.

On my XP gaming box, I have an Audigy X-Gamer with an Altec 5.1 speaker
setup (which I adore like a child).  Since the demo came out, I've really
been feeling the bottleneck on my old Duron 700, so much so that I finally
busted out the CC and ordered up an Athlon XP today to get it more up to
speed.  But it's a week out in the mail, so I figured I'd tinker a bit to
see what improvements I could come up with in the meantime.

I have a GeForce 3, which to handle the graphics just fine.  Flyby demos
bench up to 120+, and generally look gorgeous.  But you throw a couple
players in the match, or actually play it online, and the FPS is death.  In
game, using stat fps, I average 17 fps on a good area, regardless of high or
low setting options.  One could call it playable, but it's certainly not
competitive.

So I scanned forums and newsgroups and came up with mostly the usual video
fixes and tweaks, and was fairly assured none would work.  Then I noticed
one small post on some usenet group, where someone with similar problems
mentioned that *disabling* hardware sound helped him out.  Against all
logic, I tried this.  Boom.  Double my frame rate.  Suddenly this game is
playable.

Isn't the whole concept of hardware sound to *remove* the load on the
processor?  Why did this work?

You may now return to your regularly scheduled Linux talk, with my desperate
apologies.


scratch-