audio problem causes games to stutter

[Sgt. MakAber]

Hi. I've got a persistent problem with a number of games where certain audio files are not being loaded into the main memory, so the games have to access the harddrive to play the sounds, causing the games to hang for 2-3 seconds. This has happened so far in TF2, X-COM:EU and Dragon Age 2. In the last two games it's just a nuisance, but in TF2 it's a real problem.

I'm playing on an Acer 7750G laptop with 8GB of RAM, onboard sound and Windows 7 64bit OS. I thought the problem might be just one of those laptop issues, but then these are all games with rather low system requirements, and in other games like Fallout 3 and Fallout:NV I've got no sound issues at all.

I've tried to do a fresh install of the sound drivers (Realtek), but that didn't help. Anybody got an idea?

[[UFO] rad87gn]

How are your temps? Plenty of room for it to get air flow from the bottom?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-7750G-Notebook.45861.0.html

[Sgt. MakAber]

Notebook is already placed on top of a cooler pad. Temperature while playing is around 88-95 Celsius max.

I don't have a general performance issue, which would be the case if the cpu was overheating. It's just that in certain games certain sound files cause a lag before they're being playd, and the system is accessing the harddrive. In TF2 it's sounds like some taunts or some special explosion noises, in XCOM: EU it's the soldiers voice sounds, in DA2 it was the dialogue. Everything else is fine.
Funny thing is that the problems in TF2 only appeared after I recently de- and reinstalled Steam, I also hadn't played the game in a while, so first I thought some update had caused the problem.

I'm at my wit's end here. I really don't think a system like mine could have a performance issue with a low requirements game like TF2, even if it's a laptop. I mean, I was able to run Crysis on medium settings.

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.