World of Warcraft & audiodg

[Kphrogg]

I recently reinstalled World of Warcraft after about a six month hiatus.
When I had last played it, it worked fine on my computer. Now, every 5-30
minutes, the frame rate plummets, and the game becomes completely unplayable
for 2-5 minutes. Using Process Explorer, I discovered that during this slow
downs, audiodg.exe is using up to 98% of the CPU! As such, I suspect that it
is the cause.

Is there a fix that anyone has discovered?

 

[Andy [YaYa]]

audiodg.exe

Strange...

According to
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/01/31/what-is-audiodg-
exe.aspx

audiodg.exe is some new audio component in Vista that, "hosts the audio
engine for Vista. All the DSP and other audio processing is done in
audiodg.exe."

Audio/Video in Vista run at the User Level, XP drivers used to run at
the Kernal level. Basically this is why if a Vista driver crashes, Vista
simply restarts the driver and moves on (drivers crashing no longer take
down the kernal, more secure, more stable, less performance, I suppose).

Summery of the article, is Audio drivers were done this way to make DRM
implementation easier/more secure.

Why it's killing your WoW game is unknown to me. What sound card do you
have on your computer? Have you gotten new drivers from the manufacturer
recently? Updated to SP1? etc.

All this stuff might help. I'm playing WoW on a system with Vista
Business and an integrated HD audio card (Dell), and at home on a system
with an X-fi card and a Logitech USB headset for Vent, no problems with
audio on either.

 

[Kphrogg]

Thanks, Andy.

I took a look at the article, and am happy to understand audiodg a little
better. It turns out that the problem I'm seeing with WoW isn't limited to
me, but it seems to be prevalent enough for a number of people to post about
it on various message boards. Alas, no one seems to have found a fix for the
problem yet.

I have updated to SP1 and have the latest drivers for my SigmaTel card (Dell).