Creative SB Audigy 2 latest sound drivers

After playing very well yesterday, today I realized that I had not updated my Audigy 2 drivers for a while and used the Software AutoUpdate on the Creative site to check for new ones. The tool downloaded and installed "Audigy2 and Audigy2 ZS Driver Update 1.84.55" (see attached history log if interested).

I rebooted after the installation and then logged into GW. The characters painted in slowly, then all video froze completely and the sound was audible for about 5 seconds or so. Then, the sound stopped, the game went to black screen and then the computer rebooted. This is the first time that GW caused a reboot for me and only the second time the game ever actually crashed.

So, I booted back up (thinking, "Hmm, how odd...") and logged in again. Again, the other characters in the city painted in slowly, after the landscape and buildings had been fully rendered. I was then able to move and experienced jerkiness and some moderate rubber-banding, even though my FPS were fine. I went to an area that I have been mining for gold pieces before I move on to the Academy. Even though my frame rates were running from 40 - 85 FPS, I was still getting the lag-like symptoms and jerkiness. Also, when I would click on items or gold to pick them up, I was getting some wierd teleporting and just plainly strange character movement.

So, I filled up my inventory and then logged out of GW and shut down the game. Logged back in, repeated the entire process with all the same results. Shut down GW and rolled back the driver, rebooting. Logged back into GW, repeated the entire process twice, and it plays as smooth as butter (BUTTAH!).

My current config (soon to be rebuilt):

XP Home SP2
Asus A7N8X Deluxe (NForce2 chipset, onboard audio disabled)
Athlon 2400+
1024mb PC3200 DDR (Corsair)
GeForce4 Ti 4600 (128mb)
Creative SB Audigy 2 Platinum
Maxtor 60gb 7200rpm
Cable 3000/256
Patton High-Velocity Household Fan on Medium Speed (LOL)

If anyone can replicate this, please post here and let us know. This might explain why some of the folks with truly high-end systems and amazing cooling are still having problems.

Ahhh... Creative and therw wonderful drivr updates. I used to have real issues with some of their drivers in the past. I generally found a version of them that works and stuck with it.

Creative's products are known resource hogs.

However your board is SoundStorm equipped, try the onboard out. It's as good as an Audigy 2 to most listeners, and you really won't see that much (if any) of a performance hit.