halo and eax

finally, halo was released for the PC last week. got my copy on monday and started playing… so far, so good. now i am at the level were you are in the covenant ship and have to rescue the (captured) captain. at this stage, the game is almost unplayable, i can’t aim neither drop grenades because something is slowing down my system dramatically! it can’t be the CPU (hey, this runs even on a p3 733 mhz!) and surely not the graphics card (brand new fx 5900). so, what’s left? the fault is my “antique” soundcard, a 1999er model of the famous SoundBlaster Live Player. after turning of EAX (which suppossedly isn’t handled correctly by the soundcard), speed improves and makes the game great fun again… the downside: music and what’s left of the “environmental audio” is really awful… the soundcard is the oldest component of my pc, so i decided to replace it with a current model: SoundBlaster Audidy2 ZS. it should arrive tomorrow.