Hmmm... Trying to figure out my problem.... I started playing GTA: San Andreas and when things load, the audio studders... Not sure whats going on... I've tried updating Drivers and the such, but its still there... I'm wondering if its because I have XP on one hard drive and GTA: SA on the other, but anyways, not sure what other information you guys need, but here is what I have...

2.6 ghz pentium 4 processor
1 gig ram
Onboard audio
Radeon 9800 Pro

I'm really not sure whats going on... Any suggestions? Like I said, I have 2 hard drives and thats the only thing I can think of maybe. Or maybe its my onboard audio sucks and I just need to nut up and go buy something better.... But anyways I am going to reinstall tommorow on my C Drive and see if thats the problem, but any hints would be great... Oh, and does anyone know a good program that I can use to see if there is anything I can do to make my computer run faster? Not sure if I explained it well enough, but Im hoping for some program to help me optimize how my pc runs, that sorta thing, but n00b friendly lol

Thanks guys
s2

Is GTA the only game that stutters? If so there might be a patch that could fix it, otherwise get some anti-spyware software and check if that's giving you a hard time. Personally I doubt that the fact you have the game installed on another disk has anything to do with it.

Ive usually encountered this problem when either you have spyware running in the background, eating up CPU cycles, you have anti-virus software that is spiking CPU usage or when you have the audio settings in the game configuered incorrectly.

If there is an option to select between Software audio and Hardware, try swapping that option and see if the problem reoccurs. Also you could monitor CPU usage for a while by bringing up the Task Manager and watching the performance tab while your machine is idle.

If you see a pattern of recurring spikes, then its time to watch the processes tab and see what process is spiking CPU usuage. I know through experience that programs doing this can affect audio in games, as well as stuttering the game graphically.

I had sound problems on San Andreas - the sounds that would play would be entirely random - sometimes you got engine noise, sometimes not. Sometimes you got gunshot sounds, sometimes not. Never did manage to figure that one out, but I haven't tried it on this machine.

The specs of the PC were quite similar to yours though - 2.6ghz P4 and dual hdds.

Ok, so I watched my performance and it seems when I'm playing I'm running at 100 percent CPU Usage, but when I'm looking at processes, it seems that its only using about 50% - 60% of the CPU.... Taskmgr would use up to 20%.... I'm not sure whats going on... I know my friend has a similar setup but runs a 2.8 ghz processor with no problem.... This is really weird....

Did you try experimenting with the audio settings in game? Never played San Andreas, but I imagine it has some audio quality/rendering mode settings.

It doesnt, I looked and all it has is is just stuff to set up your radio stations in the game, I wish it had a diffrent settings like hardware and software.... Hmmmm... Not sure whats going on here.... I dont notice it in other games, but audio in GTA: SA seems a little more taxing than other games

I had a system wide problem with stuttering audio maybe a year ago (on my old platform. I posted it somewhere here and misspelled stuttering...).
I tried so many anti-spyware and virus scan and they didn't work. I tried removing old programs and uptating drivers and that didn't work etiher. Of course, I didn't have the problem in linux. I wonder why.
Anyway, I just did a clean install and that fixed it.
I've also had GTA problems were sometimes you can hear engine noises and other time you can't. It doesn't really bother me.