No argument here. The question is, whether people use them. Back in the day, when the only integrated option was AC97 (or worse), I had several PCI soundcards, eventually settling on Auzentech Prelude 7.1. Now, that was THE sound…
But I digress, nowadays people won’t bother with anything like that. Especially since the (essentially) only surviving PCI-E soundcard is either ASUS Xonar, which has its own issues, or exotique stuff like RME, whose prices I’m not exactly comfortable discussing here.
Your survey got me thinking, and yesterday I went into the BIOS and disabled the built-in audio completely. I don’t think it will make any difference, but still, shouldn’t hurt. Will need to give it a run and see.
The only time the game really Freezes on me. Is just when I get into a new game. Other than that it really doesn’t freeze on me when playing the game. But when it does freeze it freezes the computer. I have to do a hard restart sometimes.
1: Hard game freeze when starting a game or joining a game. Solo or multiplayer. Must kill Diablo3 through task manager. Seems to happen more often when entering a game starting in Act 2 Hidden Camp. I’ve seen this issue happen several times in a row. The issue comes and goes I’ve seen this issue for several years.
2: Hard game freeze upon entering a rift or a greater rift. Solo or multiplayer. Must kill Diablo3 through task manager. I haven’t seen this often enough to recognize which map set(s) it happens on, or if that even matters. Very erratic on frequency, can happen a few times in one night, or not at all over the course of a month. This is a development within the past couple of years.
3: Random 10-15 second freezes while playing. Solo or multiplayer. Happens mostly in higher greater rifts, but I’ve seen it happen elsewhere. If playing solo, the game automatically goes into a pause state. This is a development in the past couple of years.
4: Stuttering issues playing certain classes or with certain classes. (Wizard) This is a more recent problem.
5: Error when jumping into a friends game. I don’t recall the error number right now, but you have to wait for the error to pop up, then you can join afterwards.
1 and 2 I’ve experienced with my current system and an older system. I don’t think 3, 4 and 5 were present or I didn’t notice them until after I upgraded to my current rig in 2019.
Current rig:
ASRock x570 Extreme4 (Realtek audio)
Ryzen 9 3900X
GTX 1080 Ti
16GB DDR4-3600
1TB gen4 NVMe SSD
Old rig:
ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe (gen1, Realtek audio)
i7-2600K
GTX 970
16GB DDR3-1866
SATA SSD
After disabling Realtek audio in BIOS, went through several 100+ GRs today, then made a full bounty run, then another couple of GRs; all of this was solo. All GRs were made with CoE equipped and AD from paragon on. No lags or freezes of any kind, but I suppose I might just been lucky.
I also use MM:Conflagrate and Slow Time: Point Of No Return instead of the standard setup; not sure if this has anything to do with it. Further testing required.
This is a separate audio chip built into the graphics card, which sends the audio via HDMI / DP cable (I suppose you use speakers in your monitor, right?). It doesn’t use Realtek or any other audio chip, it’s completely self-sufficient. Still, I suspect that disabling Realtek in Windows might not be enough, as the device is still present and game might trigger on it when it sees it. If you will disable built-in audio in motherboard’s BIOS, it will disappear completely.
(No idea if it will help; just food for thought.)
When you have freezes be sure your getting the sound error, which will be in the D3error log. You could be getting HD or SSD issues which can cause lags and freezes during loads. There is fixes out there for that. The sound freeze on the other hand has no fix so far, just a bandaid.
Those of you that have been filling out the surveys, thank you! I have had a couple people that didn’t fill out the second one though. Be sure to do both of them when you do them.
I’m almost up to 20 responses. Once we are 7 days in I will be gathering the responses and posting them up here. But the more I get before then, the better. Whether you are encountering freezes or not freezing at all, please take a couple minutes to fill these out.
You all have till Tuesday this week (the 4th) of May:
Just be sure to fill out both, they are very short and won’t take long. Any problems, just reply to this thread.
An interesting lead has been posted in another thread on this forum:
Since all we can do at this point is grasping at straws, this one might also be worth checking. Since it specifically mentiions “spatial sound”, check your sound settings and make sure it’s off: https://imgur.com/pkIlCsB