Win2k Crappy MP3 performance

[ellingtond]

win2k on a Athlon 800 brand new system, fast drives etc. I get skipping and slurring whenever I use winamp or Winmedia. I have tried an onboard sound card and a good PCI soundcard with little improvement. There has got to be something in the way win2k processes sound, because the CPU gets eaten up when I am trying to play music. I have it set for desktop computer and resources to forground. Any have similar problems?

DE

[gotbyk]

What software are you using? I am running a Dual Celeron 466 and get about 12% CPU usage when using media player 7 and MP3s at 160 Kb/sec. I have run Win2K on numerous other machines(to include a 200MHZ Pentium) over the last 1 1/2 year (betas too) using mostly WinAMP and have not had any problems like that.

[chewymix]

Hi Guys... I have a similar thing going on with a SB Live and Win2k. Winamp plays fine but there is wierd screeching sometimes. This is on a P3 600. I thought it was due to live wire but no joy yet. No biggie tho.

[ellingtond]

Funny, I was using winamp and win media 7.

However, I said the heck with w2k on that machine. Reformated to win98 and they have no mp3 problems at all using internal or PCI sound. Someone else told me that win2k places way too much overhead on the cpu. I have a client that we were trying to get DVD drivers for a thinkpad 770. (pentium 333) IBM said that there would be none because a 333 couldn't handle win2k and dvd software decompression.

Thanks

[Jvaguy]

Im using cd spec pro with a 500mhz, 256 mb ram, ata-66 drives and sound blaster live x-gamer and all is fine now when running certain apps while playing mp3s i get a glitch now and then but other wise things are normal ive had hardly any problems with mp3s and w2k weird maybe its cause i have things so configured try making the mp3s app the active window and see if its still doing it to narrow down the cpu overhead .. good luck

[Punk[er]]

I have a Pentium3 800 overclocked to 900. I have absolutely no problems with mp3s at all. the win2k cpu meter hangs around 1-2% when using 320kb/s mp3files. maybe its an AMD thing?

[spinning]

Since you started the AMD/Intel thing. I am running a Thunderbird 850 with a Sound Blaster PCI 128 card on Win2k, and have never had a bit of problem.

Actually my Pentium 400 has more problems with sound, but I can trace that to running other programs that hog the CPU.