Snap Crackle Pop, and no its not my cereal

[gutted]

Eric,

MP3s are probably decoded on the fly. The heavy CPU useage is most likely not the decoding process, but the player "preparing" to do whatever it does. I reckon you're right about the buffer thing - the MP3 will probably be stored in a temporary cache or something so there is less processing when you play it again.

Did you have any luck with the PSU?

Dan.

[eedmond]

Only 7:45am here so be a bit before the stores open for the PSU. On the MP3 front I remembered a hardware setting in Realplayer and checked it out, it was set to Best Quality under Playback Settings, I lowered this to Lowest CPU Usage now when it loads a MP3 it maxes out at about 35% CPU usage. This might fix the problem in Realplayer but I know of no command like this in Horizons. Will test it out heavily today in Real and Horizons. Will also buy the new PSU and try it out later today and let you know.

-Eric

[eedmond]

Bought a Thermaltake 480W W0013RU W/O PFC Power supply. The clicking noise from the PS is gone but the sound still crackles while playing music. If you ever buy one of these Powersupplies have alot of cord ties available I have never seen SO many power cables. Filled my case full.

-Eric

[eedmond]

Sigh, I am not sure what is going on now. When I downgraded my video card drivers and rebooted the BIOS beeped and said it couldn't find a keyboard. I just rebooted and it worked fine. I think I am gonna toss this board and gonna buy a Abit NF7-S board. Would buy the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe but I am not sure with reading all of those sound issues with the Deluxe board.

The Abit board will allow me to lose my Promise PCI card and my Audigy.

Anybody have experience with this Abit board?

-Eric

[eedmond]

Well before I go and buy a new MB I did some investigating on Asus's website. Found under their FAQ that installing the nVidia Unifide driver on the A7N8X could cause problems due to their tweaks they did to the nVidia chipset. So I have since uninstalled the nVidia drivers and am running the Asus ones now. Unfortunatly the game servers are down for a patch so will have to wait a bit to see if this causes any differences in either the sound or video issues I have been having.
http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=83982

-Eric

[eedmond]

nothing is changed with the correct Asus drivers.

-Eric