Thanks for the driver link magnetic_kisser but I already downloaded a more recent driver
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download.asp?MainCategory=1&nRegionFK=&nCountryFK=&nLanguageFK=&sOSName=Windows+XP&region=1&Product_Name=Audigy+2+ZS&Product_ID=4915&modelnumber=&driverlang=1033&OS=10&drivertype=1&x=27&y=17

Regarding your questions

I usually close any running application when playing a game. I also did a "run >> msconfig" to uncheck "load up start up items" to investigate if there is any particular application causing the issue. Additionally tried disabling EAX and sound acceleration from game option, none did help

Initially I suspected there were problems with the sound card, however I tried running it with, Doom 3, Gates of Oblivion, Quake 4 in addition to multimedia application such as wimamp media player, none of which have the issue. So far the only games I had this issue with are F.E.A.R (which wasn't often) and currently the game in discussion

So I can safely say its ingame sound problem, rather than hardware one. As for the discription of how the sound looks like, its a quite hard to describe with words, its a constant intermittent distortion, in the form of a popping and skipping noise. Its quite frequent throughout the game except for the movie scenes though. I tried plugging various speakers to the sound card, to varify its not a speaker specific problem as well

I will also try to link and upload an audio recording of the game to give a precise idea how the audio noise looks like tomorrow, since I don't have a connection at home

Hh yes I forgot to mention it, I haven't yet tried the acceleration setting, will do tonight when I get home

As for the sound clip it should be ready by the tomorrow, due to the fact that I don't have interent connection at home and internet cafe is the current means at this time

I tried reducing the sound acceleration. It didn't work, also it disabled EAX altogether which is a major downside

I studied your guide MASQUERAID, I used Powerstrip to tweak the PCI latencies. According to the utility the initial values were

Graphic card: 248
Networkcard: 128
Soundcard: 32

I expreminted with some values firstly

Grahpic 128
Networkcard: 32
Soundcard: 64

It helped a bit but not by very much

Secondly I tried the following values

Graphic: 80
Networkcard: 32
Soundcard: 128

The issue wasn't quiet resolved at least  seems the frequency of the noise has been reduced from a very frequent persistent noise to occasional

Perhaps I need to increase the soundcard latency to 248 to completely get rid of the noise on the other hand beyond 128 would be too high and create system instability. Isn't it? Please advise

Here is a more detailed information regaring my system specification. I used Everest Ultimate Edition to generate the reports, they are all in html format.

System Summary
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R2BKWSRD

Hardware Configuration
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UIS1PALN

Software Configuration
http://depositfiles.com/files/370357


Unfortunately I couldn't upload the sound clip I previously mentioned due to connection difficulties, hopefully by tomorrow.

Regards
a_anis3000

 
 

 

vSync is already. I tried updatig the Logitec mouse driver by installing the latest mouseware

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/downloads/software/CA/EN,CRID=1792,contentid=5269

Suprisingly it made things worse. Interestingly it returned the issue exactly the way it was before. I ended up unistalling the driver and using system restore to revert back

Thats correct, I used the standard windows driver

UPdate: sorry about the abscence as I have been away on a vacation for around a week hence away from home

Today I conduct a series of tweaks based on MASQUERAID's guide. I disabled all unecessary and unused hardware, ports...some of which from bios and the rest from windows device manager, to free up IRQ resources minimizing sharing/conflicts ensuring that the Sata hardrive controller (into which the HD containing the game reside), audio card and graphic cards are no longer sharing any IRQs

Also, I raised the PCI latencey for my audio card as such
Graphic: 128
Networkcard: not applicable since I disabled it
Soundcard: 160
 
I difragmented the Harddrives and once again made sure no running application was active in the background (including virus scanners)

After testing the game, even thought the issue hasn't been resolved, the audio glitches seems to have been reduced to quite an acceptable level now, whenever it occurs I can always restart the game. Still if possible rather that noise is permanently resolved, restarting the game whenever the noise occurs is quite a hassle since the game only save at particular save points many if which are distrubate too far apart

I am not sure if I could raise the PCI latency for the audio card any further, since this could be counter beneficial, as far as at most sound cards should not be cofigured more than 160, high latency values should be typically assigned to graphic cards

I reinstalled the game Magnetic_kisser. Didn't have any effect, beside I always do a full installation, the only time the game disc is accesses is during the copy protection verification, which only occurs when you lauch the game

If the DVD were defective I doubt it would install in the first place

The only other thought I have left now is the audio card could be defective, however the rest of the games including resources consuming games (such as oblivion, doom 3, Quake 4..etc), all games are fine, the only time I ever had such problems beside POP3 is F.E.A.R, but its mostly at the menu screen, and the game was shipped with several issues that it had up to around 6 patches (1.08 is the latest one atm 500mb).





 

well finally after several attempts I was able to upload the vidoe clip (along with the sound clip) to demonstrate the sound problem I am expriencing. I apologize for the long delay and for taking so long, the internet cafe I have been accessing has been so slow in terms of upload and download speed for a while due to techincal difficulties.

Here it is

http://depositfiles.com/files/389548

I took the video clip using fraps. Xvid required in order to view the clip