soundmax intergrated digital audio sounds bad

I have a SoundMAX Integrated Audio Digital Audio that sounds like it is hesitating when its playing music. It slows my computer down, and when I turn off my speakers and turn them back on they sound better, for a while. It really sounds like my computer is working and it doesnt have enough memory to play music and have programs open. So I reinstalled the drivers and it was a waste of time. Could it be that my speakers are bad? I just bought this computer so I see no reason for faulty computer speakers. So can someone help me out???

Its a Dell Dimension Desktop 3000, with Windows XP Home, Pentium 4 2.8 GHz and 512RAM.

Try hitting Control-Alt-Delete and bring up the Task Manager while playing an audio file. Select the Processes tab, find the process for your audio driver/utility , right-click on it and select High or Realtime to change the process priority. You may also want to goto Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services and disable any unnecessary services. You might also goto Start/Run and type in msconfig and then OK. Select Selective Startup and then Startup and uncheck any unnecessary programs to keeep them from loading at startup and then reboot. Hope this helps, good luck.

In addition download new drivers here particularly the chipset drivers - install them first, then install the audio drivers.

additionally there is a bios update although there is no mention of improving the sound, it has been known for all kinds of tweaks and improvements to be added at the same time as the main reason for creating a new bios.