simple, on board sound doesn't have its own sound processor, everything is running on your CPU, but thanks to having a dual core processor the audio codec is running completely off your second core. Thats why it looks more balanced.

Also since its an audigy its actually offloading some work to the processor. Since those came out before dual core processors became real popular, they don't have any kind of dual core support built in, and its automatically unloading the little bit of extra work to the first core.

My recommendation would be to upgrade to an X-FI, problem solved. Those things don't offload anything at all. Performance increase between audigy and X-FI is about the only thing you'll notice(x-fi will do about 500% of the work that an audigy will, and will cover any sound processing you might have to throw at it on its own, w/o offloading). Actual sound quality difference between them is negligible. X-FI is slightly better, but you've gotta be an audiophile to even notice it.

EDIT: The threaded optimization will work better if you force the sins process to run off the second core... should be balanced out, since that nvidia thing is crap if you don't have a sound card and force the audio codec back onto CPU1

EDIT: forgot to mention that the X-FIs don't unload anything within reason... if you've got several thousand ships firing at the same time... don't expect it to process all of that on its own(though it might, not entirely certain where the upper threshhold is for it, haven't managed to encounter it yet)

ummm, vista handles the X-FI about as well as it handles anything... which means... depending on what other hardware you have installed... good luck.

Fortunately vista is going the way of ME. MS has windows 7 in the works now. They're FINALLY taking a page out of the Linux book and scaling the kernel down. This should make it much more stable, more secure and have less issues with hardware. Most of which should be fixable by a HW vendor driver patch rather than MS having to fix their own f***up(thanks be to joe pesci)


Also I've got the Creative X-FI platinum editon. Works wonders for performance on sound-intensive games.

Holy ****

I definitely have a problem if you get 70 fps in a typical battle. If I post a savegame can you try it out and see what sort of FPS you get when watching the battle? 70 fps... by my computer's behaviour that's nuts for a 3750 no offense intended. You have ALL effects turned up all the way?

My contempt for Vista comes from personal experience. This experience alone would make me stick with XP until the next major OS comes out, but being helpless to stumble upon thousands of people who hate the OS just as much if not more than I do, cements this feeling in me: Vista is the new Windows ME.

There were a few people like you who loved ME as well, and there's probably still a handful of them around... I could list off dozens of things in Vista that were done wrong but I have to assume you've already ignored a hundred others like me, since absolutely anyone in their right mind would ridicule you for your choice of OS.

The reason we're looking forward to the next version of Windows despite Microsoft's butchering of "Windows 6" is that, for all their mistakes, we still recognize that Windows is the platform we're used to and we'd like to continue using it for the foreseeable future - just, we'd like a version that's not a trainwreck and an unmitigated disaster for all parties involved.

I too have been using an OS for months without a crash, and it's called Windows XP. You can achieve this by not installing things that are blatantly illegitimate or by generally exercising good sense. I also have a complete library of stable, high-performance drivers at my disposal, I can plug in any device from the last decade and it can be made to work with minimal hassle, I can watch movies any way I want, and I'm not harassed by absurd DRM that only slows down legitimate customers. I can play any game or use any software developed for what's remained the standard for the last 7 years, and emulate virtually any other environment required for software developed in the last 10 years or more. It's not even a matter of familiarity - as Mac users are so proud to say, "It just works", only not by virtue of there being almost no software available, but because it's the best consumer OS to date. If I have problems, I can fix them, because XP has such a high adoption rate that everything MUST be able to work on it.

I apologize for coming off like such a prick, but in my mind defending Microsoft's choices in developing Vista is inconceivable. It's not about being witty or clever, it's not like we're criticizing something to sound cool, it's about refusing to give any respect at all to such a shameful waste of time and money. Vista adds nothing new that is worth having. It gives you DirectX 10, however this has no appreciable performance or quality improvements over version 9. It is simply an excuse to sell more copies of a bad product, as evidenced by the fact that "Halo 2" for PC for instance, is advertised as requiring Vista and DirectX 10 to work, but in fact will work under Windows XP and DirectX 9 by simply modifying the installer. Rubbish, just rubbish. I'm not going any further with this since I'd be going on all night.

Since this thread isn't about discussing one's OS preference, I please take your crusade somewhere else where everyone hates Vista, namely, the whole of the internet besides this thread.

Here's the save:

http://www.aaspring.com/test1.zip

Watch the battle between light blue (me) and purple. It's at one of the volcanic planets, probably doesn't last very long since they'll immediately shit their pants and run when they see the size of my fleet.

So all in all your save was pretty smooth playing for me, no stuttering or any other problems. If I turned things down a bit I'm sure it would get higher frames but no need to if it's smooth, even if it says it's "only" 20 fps.

I typically play with less players and thus probably why I'm seeing frames of 50+ and more toward 90-100. When there are 8 players with so many ships the game will slow down. Heck, Civ 4 or Gal Civ 2 slows down for me late game with 6 civs and tons of units and that game is by no means has cutting edge graphics. It's the CPU having to handle all those units and AI that slows things down, not so much the graphics.

On my old computer the most frames I could get with Sins was 25-30 and usually down around 10 in big battles. Your save probably would have turned it into a slide show. But overall it was pretty smooth even at medium to high settings. I upgraded more for Oblivion then anything else, better Sins is just a bonus.

What resolution are you running it at and what AA and AF are you set to? That can make a big difference.

As for speed, actually the 8800 GTS 320 and the HD3870 are pretty much on par with each other performance wise, 3870 probably a bit better.
Check this review of the 3850 which is a step below my card: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/3723966

It's pretty much on par with the 8800 and actually does a good bit better with AA and AF turned up.

So I don't think it's surprising at all that we get very similar performance. All in all good performance in my opinion.