Sound issue, and possible solution?

System Specs:
P4 @ 2.8 GHRZ
GeForce 6800 GS
Sound Blaster Audigy
2.24 Gigs RAM.

I've only noticed this recently, well, within the last few weeks. Lately when I play GW, the game starts running fine, but the longer I play, I find that my overall game performance drops FPS wise.

Considering I have installed a brand new graphics card (Geforce 6800 GS, before I used an ATI Radeon x700 Pro.) and an extra gig of ram since the last time I played, I dont think its my system, but I've basically run out of options.

Here's what I've found out:

if I use the switch "-nosound" on the gw shortcut, my game runs FLAWLESSLY, we're talking 60 FPS and absolutely no hangs. but the moment I remove that switch, the slow degrading of game performance continues.

I've installed the latest version of both DirectX, and my sound card drivers, and had no luck remedying it. I've also checked to ensure the soundcard is not on the same Interrupt Request as any other devices.

Thinking it might have been the sound card, I went out and bought a new one, since my audigy card is a TAD old now *Cough*. however, I picked up a new card that was in the lower end cost wise, and that hasnt fixed the problem, infact I think it might be worse.

This leads me to wonder, if I were to go and pick up a top of the line sound card, would it fix my issue? The one suggested to me was: http://www.creative.com/products/pro...roduct=140 00

except the only one in my area I seem to be able to find is a:
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pro...83&catid=10499

I can't seem to think of any other possible solution, since I've tried everything I can think of (including a full system wipe and reformat).
I hate having to choose between playing GW with good performance and no sound, or shitty performance and sound.

Anyone have any advice? Would buying a brand new sound card work do you figure?

Thanks.

Probably not. The sound problem in GW has been around for a couple months now. Lowering the "quality" slider (I STILL can't say that word without rolling my eyes) and restarting the game may help. You MUST exit the game completely and restart it each time you move the slider or it gets WORSE. Do not believe the bullshit that the changes take effect on the fly. For some people it reduces glitches to the point of making the game bearable. For some it cuts out their sound completely. It never does the same thing twice. Once I had music only coming from the rear speakers. Once, music was at a fixed point source, so I could only hear it if my toon was facing in a certain direction. Sometimes if I'm near a waterfall or fountain, I can only hear the water effects when I run, a momentary sound in tune with my footfalls. Most often it's the CEASELESS echoing of the "skill interrupted" sound, which just keeps repeating so much that you think your PC is infested with crickets.

The 3D sound engine that was incorporated into the game was and still is horribly buggy. I have an Audigy 2 ZS myself, hardly a dinosaur sound card, and I get all kinds of sound bugs. But only on Guild Wars. And only after the "quality" slider and "improved" sound engine were implemented. I've come to realize that a lot of people who say it's "fixed" aren't using a full surround sound setup, thus they're not going to hear the godawful echoing and disproportional feedback in the rear channels. I haven't even seen any confirmation from A-net that this bug is being worked on anymore. Their tackling of this issue is is so unbelievably Microsoft-like that it makes my stomach churn.

EDIT: Oh, to answer your question about FPS, the "improved" sound engine does suck up CPU cycles, since it calculates distance-volume vectors on each sound effect. Most games only show a slight FPS increase with no sound, but again GW's new sound engine is so inefficient and buggy and poorly-tested that it probably eats more resources at times than the graphics rendering engine. Your FPS will really nosedive when observing GVG, because of dozens of sounds being calculated at once. I haven't tried it yet, and pretty much refuse to, but setting your sound to 2-channel in Control Panel may help a lot, because then only L/R channels have to be calculated, intead of FR/FL/RR/RL. A low-end sound card that doesn't do any hardware mixing will drop your FPS further, because that's even more work for the CPU to do. The Audigy / Audigy 2 cards are famous for their extremely low CPU utilization.

Just understand that your problem is sloppy programming, not your own personal hardware / software.