VENT or TEAMSPEAK audio stuttering in i17 - Ultra Mode - Solution#2

I have read at least 6 complaints by people in the forums of speech stuttering and general audio lag when in ventrilo or team speak, but only on test server i17 at the moment. Mind you, as I'm posting this, they are still working on i17, so many of these problems might be solved before i17 goes live, but this is to help if the problem still exists with vent and team speak after the live patch. I figured out the problem which might cause you to sigh as it relates directly to Ultra-Mode and CPU usage, which taxes your system overall. Hopefully, this will aid you with another humble solution when i17 goes to LIVE servers. *sigh*

To start, my system is an AMD Athlon II X2-240, 4Gb system memory, 500Gb Raid stripe 0 array,XP pro (sp3), EVGA Nvidia GTX-260 (core 216), not the fastest computer in the world, but pretty darn good and average for what people have at home, more or less these days. My simple test was not so scientific. I could dig into windows and every little thing to find out exactly why, where and how ventrilo was stuttering or lagging, but I kept it simple to my specific needs and to help me find out what was going on. I leave further tests to those who are more curious than I and with a better knowledge of 'puters. :P

Here's what's been happening and my test results: (*cough >.>*)

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1. I was experiencing audio speech stuttering on test server last night and other nights while on ventrilo with a friend. I checked my ISP server, ventrilo server and CoH server ping rates and through-put. All were fine, running smoothly.

2. I have my in-game graphics set on the highest settings (as I usually do on live server.) with no issues of lag and such (53-78fps), but this time, for test reasons as one would do on test server, I set ultra mode on the highest settings, everything ON, i.e. shadows, reflections, occlusions, water..etc.. The works.

3. For testing, I moved my toon to a spot in Sharkhead Island where no other player activity was and parked it, still as a leaf, turning off all toggles and animations.

4. I prompted windows task manager, checked my CPU and Memory usage.
CPU usage:87%-94% -- PF usage 1.38Gb o,o

5. I turned off shadows altogether and re-checked CPU / PF usage, (again not moving the toon with no other players around).
CPU usage:97%-100% -- PF usage 1.37Gb O.O
----> As you can see, the CPU jumped up when I shut shadows off, which sounds a bit odd. You would think usage would go down a tad.

6. I shut off ultra mode entirely, except occlusions, and here's the CPU / PF usage.
CPU usage:42%-88% -- PF usage 1.37Gb
----> This stoped all ventrilo stuttering and vent ping spikes completely. The problem was a pegged CPU with no where to go, not ventrilo.

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I've noticed that if you play with both reflection and water effects settings, these will greatly affect your CPU usage. Running shadows at their highest or even moderate settings will affect your frame rate greatly, but not so much the CPU usage as water and reflections does.
Occlusions also affect your frame rate, but set to "slight"-"performance"-"bilateral" seemed to solve that problem for my system and smoothed out frame rate.
It seems that reflections and water effects are the main culprit aside from shadows, so it's your choice whether you want to run them on high or not. I ran reflections and water on medium settings, shutting off shadows entirely and had a CPU usage of about 67-88% (red side) with no ventrilo stutter.

So, with my system running in ultra mode at the highest settings, CPU usage went through the roof. Lowering your ultra mode settings and finding a comfortable lower CPU usage sweet spot (using windows task manager) will hopefully help get rid of vent / team speak, lag, ping spikes and stuttering. When the CPU spikes to it's maximum, it will affect your audio card and everything else running in windows. On-board audio will be affected more than higher end audio cards that have their own buffers and processors. A current high end audio card installed on your system might solve this problem, but I doubt it. I'm not the expert, but as a simple rule, if it's taxing your system, bad things will happen. (Caveman summery GO..!)

I realize that ultra mode is going to tax everyone's system more or less, especially those with older AMD Intell 2300+ systems and AGP video cards, unless you're running god-like video cards with current quad-4 CPUs and enough RAM to choke a clown, but I think people should be aware of this so they know what ultra mode is capable of pertaining to their systems. An older AMD or Intel 2300 system with a great AGP card will choke as soon as you set ultra mode on high for everything. It was designed for very high end cards. It's a promise though, that ultra mode on ultra high settings is so far advanced, that for many years to come, it will still strangle any frame rate you think you might have to death.

It's yet another awesome add-on to this already wonderful game, but ultra-mode was built with future expansion in mind, not just what we can do with it now.

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I can't feel my legs..!