Let me start by saying I thought I saw a thread in regard to this in this forum, but for the life of me I can't find it so I am starting a new thread.This weekend I tried a simple test of the performance of my system with the onboard Avance/RealTek AC'97 audio card. Here is the specs on my systemP4 2.66Ghz 533Mhz FSB768 MB Mushkin MemoryGeForce Ti4200 8x AGP120GB Hard drive 2MB cacheAvance/RealTek AC'97 onboard audio 6.1The latest Omega drivers set for qualityWinXP Home SP1 with all hotfixesFlight Sim setup (FS2002 Pro)I have all sliders maxed except the following:Visibility (set to minimum)Water Detail (set to minimum)I also unchecked extended terrain textures and Anti-aliasing.Now to the start of the test, I start FlightSim and load the PSS A320. Load a flight plan from KMEM to KCLE with ActiveSky providing the weather over my dialup connection. Now I noticed stuttering as I started the engines and during the taxi. The stuttering happened every so often and I don't think it affected the sim too much but it was noticeable. I also recall in the past that the ATC speech would stutter but that did not happen during these tests. My FPS would hover around 20FPS but would drop as low as 9 during the taxi phase.I disabled the onboard audio in the BIOS and setup FS the exact same way, and I noticed that the stutters were gone. At this time the weather at KMEM was pretty bad and generating that type of weather should have some effect on performance, but my performance was rock solid. No more dips and spikes in FPS and the overall experience was stable. So I downloaded the latest drivers for the audio from my PC manufacturers website and installed with the same results. So I am getting a dedicated sound card (Hercules Fortissimo III) ASAP.Hopefully if you are experiencing stutters and you have onboard audio, you may want to try this test. Hope this helps

Very informative post. I just went to a dedicated sound card, and *wow* the benifits are immense. In just FS performance alone, the speed is great. I never ran the test you did, but you have confirmed something I knew :)

The difference was literally night and day. The key thing I noticed after turning off the audio is that the FPS was so much more consistent. Like I said previously no more dips and spikes and no more stutters.For anyone who is interested CompUSA is selling the Hercules Fortissimo III sound card for $49.99 with a $20.00 Mail in rebate. I will pick one up today or tomorrow and YES I will mail in the rebate :-)

If your thinkin' creative do yourself a favor and Check out M-Audio. I just purchased the "Revolution" 7.1 and can't wait to turn up the Logitechs :).Installed one in an MP3 machine I built last week and with a set of Klipsch 4.1 the sound was beyond anything I have heard. Even made the Audigy2 I was running sound Muddy and Washed out.WWW.Newegg.com has the card for $90.. For the money the sound quality has no comparison.Bobby

I must try this too. When you disable the on-board sound in BIOS, do you also have to disable it in Device Manager in XP? Also- when you re-enable the on-board sound in BIOS, what does XP do when it sees it (assuming you didn't disable the device in DM)?Thanks,Bruce.

Once I disabled it in the BIOS I did not look in Device Manager in XP because I was sure that it wouldn't work. Once I enabled it, XP picked it back up. I think the key is as long as the BIOS is set to 'Plug and Play OS' then you won't have anything to worry about but as always I must say your mileage may vary.

Thanks.Bruce.

well,as for me,the onchip audio saved me.when i changed my gforce2mx card to a brand new radeon pro 9700,Fs started to stutter!after many tries, i decided to take my creative sound blaster live card player out.and i put on the onchip audio of the mother board to get sound in FS,and it solved my problem.of course i tried to put the live card back to confirm that it was the problem.so now i'm trying to find a nice pci sound card,because it's well known that except Nvidia onchip audio(nforce mothers boards),the others use to much of cpu power,and everyone who plays FS needs a lot of cpu power! :)

Thanks for sharing your experiences.Bruce.