Software or Hardware Sound.

[Tenshi]

The game should work faster in hardware mode since this will enable hardware acceleration and take some of the work off the cpu. Yet everyone seems to recomend setting the sound to software mode...this might be because it resolves sound problems, but that probably only the case because it bypasses the sound card.

Its also worth remembering that audio could be affected by other ingame problems like swapping. Swapping could cause the sound to stutter.

Anyway, what settings does everyone use?

[lcplsickoll]

Re: Software or Hardware Sound.

Hardware, High, EAX on.

[Shamus]

Re: Software or Hardware Sound.

In order to take advantage of the Hardware sound option, one need to have one of the supported sound cards. Unfortunately, this list mostly includes Creative sound cards made withing the past two years. A quality sound card like the Audigy 2 ZS does infact take a great deal of load off of the CPU.

Software mode is for those users who don't have one of the recommended cards or for those with integrated sound chips on the motherboard. I understand that the sound is fine this way but EAX would be missing and the doplar effects the game uses would tax even the best tuned CPU and memory subsystem.

I use Hardware/High because of my Audigy 2 ZS.