I have a few questions:

1) What version of Half-Life are we talking about? If you type in ‘version’ (without quote marks) in the command console in the game, what version number is reported? If the version of the game is too recent, it’s not impossible that incompatibilities with the AWE32/64 might have been introduced in a patch/later re-release.

2) Is it being played directly from a CD-ROM or is it a digital copy played directly from a hard drive/SSD? In some games, the PC attempting to access the CD-ROM drive (either to load assets or play a Redbook audio track) can cause a stuttering pause to occur while the CD is spinning up in the drive.

3) What operating system are you playing it on and with what AWE64 drivers are you playing the game with? Drivers can sometimes be responsible for weirdness happening in games, and you’ll be surprised how picky some games can be about driver versions/dates with certain cards/adapters.

Also, I seem to remember both HL1 and HL2 having these weird little brief stutter loops happening even with perfectly functional and compatible video/audio cards, so I wouldn’t blame the hardware too much for these game-specific quirks. I can run a few tests with Half-Life with a couple of my older computers to see if I come across them as well.

Dipshidian wrote on 2025-09-28, 11:03:

I have a few questions: […]
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I have a few questions:

1) What version of Half-Life are we talking about? If you type in ‘version’ (without quote marks) in the command console in the game, what version number is reported? If the version of the game is too recent, it’s not impossible that incompatibilities with the AWE32/64 might have been introduced in a patch/later re-release.

2) Is it being played directly from a CD-ROM or is it a digital copy played directly from a hard drive/SSD? In some games, the PC attempting to access the CD-ROM drive (either to load assets or play a Redbook audio track) can cause a stuttering pause to occur while the CD is spinning up in the drive.

3) What operating system are you playing it on and with what AWE64 drivers are you playing the game with? Drivers can sometimes be responsible for weirdness happening in games, and you’ll be surprised how picky some games can be about driver versions/dates with certain cards/adapters.

It’s the GOTY Edition, but updated to version 1.1.1.0. I was initially playing it with a burned CD-ROM, but I also tested it without the CD after updating it and the problem persisted.

I’m using Windows 98 Second Edition and Creative’s AWE64 driver suite. I don’t know what exact version as I got it from a .iso I found online months ago, but the 16-bit audio driver is dated 12-9-1997.

usually this is either the standard system freeze from loading a new redbook track or, more specific to this game, the audio stutter that it does when loading a new area. it's always been a bit wonky like that and it's not AWE specific. that said, you can try putting on sbw9xup, which is a driver update from late 1998. otherwise make sure DMA is checked for the HDD and disc drive in order to minimize hitches from loading.

I should also note that the stutters are very persistent. Nearly any spot where dialogue occurs is prone to it, and the audio becomes severely messed up as a result. It’s not uncommon for a line like “We’ve just sent the sample down to the test chamber” to come out like “We’ve we- sample test chamber”. It doesn’t make the game unplayable, but it’s very annoying because the NPCs almost all talk like malfunctioning robots.

I can try sbw9xup. I think I have a copy of it on my burned driver CD.

Tried it. The problem is still there.

What’s weird is that it’s never consistent exactly when or where the problem occurs. Sometimes I’ll enter the Black Mesa lobby and the Barney will talk about the system crash without any issues, sometimes I’ll walk in and he’ll start talking, and suddenly the game will stutter juuuuust a little bit and his speech will get garbled. Sometimes the spot on the tram ride with the helicopter will do it, sometimes not. Sometimes it’ll be the area with the radiation spill, sometimes not. That’s what makes it extra-frustrating, because I just can’t pin down what the real problem is.

well a cheap sblive may be worth it as EAX is decent in this game. i played it through with that on similar BX p3 hardware (albeit 1 ghz), it had the slight issues as i've mentioned but not like what you are describing. and since you didn't address it, is DMA on in device manager?

What video settings are used in Half-Life? To rule out the possibility of the 3D card API affecting performance, testing the game in all modes — Software, OpenGL, Direct3D — might be worth a try if you haven’t already done so. To be extra sure, try using an older PCI or AGP video card (with or without 3D acceleration) with DirectX compatibility to make sure the GeForce MX isn’t introducing any unwanted behavior in Half-Life.

Dipshidian wrote on 2025-09-28, 13:21:

What video settings are used in Half-Life? To rule out the possibility of the 3D card API affecting performance, testing the game in all modes — Software, OpenGL, Direct3D — might be worth a try if you haven’t already done so. To be extra sure, try using an older PCI or AGP video card (with or without 3D acceleration) with DirectX compatibility to make sure the GeForce MX isn’t introducing any unwanted behavior in Half-Life.

Direct3D at 640x480. I have an ATI Rage IIc that came with my mobo bundle I could test, though I have no idea if it'll run the game any good.

I wouldn't be surprised if the GPU was causing issues. I pulled it out of a WinXP machine that had been rotting in the attic for a decade and a half, and while it's never given me trouble, I'm always side-eyeing it a bit because of its age and the place it was stored in.

I noticed that CD audio in general is spotty on this machine. When I tried Half-Life for the first time, I got exactly one(1) track to play and it was several seconds into loading a zone during the tram ride. I get no CD audio at all from WinQuake even with the CD in the tray. Whether that's a card issue or a CD drive issue, I have no way of knowing for sure unless I get a different card. Sound Blaster Lives are dirt cheap tho, so I could buy one and test.

I remember fixing some half life issue by turning off, mmm, something to do with mouse smoothing (I think) in the options. Iirc it was causing some weird stutter that would cause audio to glitch and the framerate drop on one of my systems

You're using an older ISA-bus based sound card, so you might want to check your BIOS settings such as '16-bit I/O Recovery Time' and anything having to do with wait states to increase the delay to allow the sound card enough time the process incoming requests. You'll also want to double-check you don't have a DMA conflict, although I guess you would know if you play any DOS-games.

Also, if you run 'dxdiag' you can sometimes get better results by lowering the DirectSound hardware acceleration setting. I remember doing this with some games for my SoundBlaster Live! back in the day and reducing from 'full acceleration' to 'basic acceleration' would make definitive difference. Of course the setting would be better in reverse depending on the game, so I ended up having to go and play with the modes each time I swapped between games...

TheMysteriousGray wrote on 2025-09-28, 14:17:

...

I noticed that CD audio in general is spotty on this machine. When I tried Half-Life for the first time, I got exactly one(1) track to play and it was several seconds into loading a zone during the tram ride. I get no CD audio at all from WinQuake even with the CD in the tray. Whether that's a card issue or a CD drive issue, I have no way of knowing for sure unless I get a different card. Sound Blaster Lives are dirt cheap tho, so I could buy one and test.

^ This stinks to me of digital audio playback mode being enabled (this became possible starting with Win98, I believe). In this mode, rather than spin at 1x and forward the CD-audio to your sound card via the analog audio cable, the audio is extracted digitally and transmitted over your IDE bus, then converted from bits to analog audio directly by your sound card. This is a much more CPU-/and bus intensive operation on period hardware like yours, and while the DAC in your sound card is probably better than the one in your disc drive, I would still recommend turning it off. Analog playback by contrast, as others have noted, will only introduce a split-second delay when switching tracks or spinning up with certain disc drives.

This could be a lot of things. I have a couple of questions and suggestions.

- How are you getting 320MB RAM? Is it a single stick of 256MB and another of 64MB? 256MB (or heck, even 128MB) is more than you'll ever need with this system and Win98SE. I'd remove that one stick.

- Have you enabled HDD and Optical Drive DMA? Weird audio hiccups and glitches are usually an indicator of one of the two not having DMA enabled.

- Which drivers are you using for the MX-4000? This is a later GeForce4 MX card that might be using much later drivers.

- Can you find an image of the original release of the game and give that a try? Or better yet, if that is an issue, can you download the Half-Life Uplink demo and give that a go?

- Lastly, someone suggested you try different video modes, not a bad idea IMO. Try running in software mode at a lower resolution and see how that performs and also give OpenGL a try.

leonardo 's suggestion also rings true, though I think you can only enable this option on WDM drivers and I believe only VXD drivers ever shipped for AWE cards. Also, in this case the OP is discussing issues with speech which is copied to the HDD at installation time AFAIR.

Lots of suggestions so I’ll respond in an all-in-one.

-Digital CD audio is inaccessible with this card and rivers, likely because they’re VxD drivers. I’ve heard the WDM drivers are bad for DOS compatibility.

-DMA is already enabled for all drives.

-the RAM is achieved through two 128MB sticks and one 64MB stick next to them, filling up all 3 slots. I ordered a single 512MB PC133 stick the other day in anticipation of overclocking, perhaps it will improve things?

-I am using Forceware 53.04 drivers, and was using Forceware 45.03 drivers initially because of their high compatibility. I only upgraded because Half-Life was not playing nice in OpenGL, with all characters being rendered as untextured white ghosts on a dark background. I only fixed that issue by updating to 1.1.1.0.

-Mouse smoothing is already turned off in the menu.

I ran through the entirety of Black Mesa Inbound all the way to the start of Unforeseen Consequences in all 3 rendering modes available to me (excluding 3DFX obviously) in 640x480, both because it’s the easiest to test and because it’s the longest near-uninterrupted string of dialogue sequences in the entire game. I’ll discuss the results separately here. No tests were performed with a CD in the tray, and thus no CD audio.

Software: the worst-performing mode naturally, but surprisingly had the fewest audio hiccups. The audio only became garbled 4 times during the test; when passing the forklift guy during the tram ride, in the room with the G-Man and the leaking radiation, and two times inside the Anti-Mass Spectrometer. Even when the game would visibly slow down or perform poorly, the audio remained almost rock solid.

OpenGL: the best graphical performance, but the worst audio performance. In areas prone to slowdown in Software mode, while the game would visually only hitch slightly, the audio would become completely garbled and incomprehensible in ways that would make SHODAN jealous, while remaining fine in Software mode. Characters would repeat themselves, skip over parts of their lines, be late delivering their lines, or even begin to double-speak. Audio is also very crackly whenever it glitches with audible pops.

Direct3D: slightly worse video performance than OpenGL, and about equal audio performance. Strangely, the locations where audio distortions occur seems to almost invert; areas that were fine in OpenGL or Software have glitches in Direct3D, and areas with issues in OpenGL are fine in Direct3D.

Could this be an indication that the GPU is causing problems somehow? When in Software mode, the game’s audio is mostly fine despite the heavier load put on the CPU, while 3D acceleration seems to cause a lot more problems handling audio despite the game playing more smoothly.

What’s weirdest of all is that no other game behaves this way. Aside from no CD audio, both WinQuake and GLQuake are rock solid in audio and video. Blood, Duke3D, all four DOS Doom WADs, even System Shock are no-notes fine. Myst and Riven and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego all work. Even Deus Ex, which runs demonstrably worse and is far more demanding, never once gives me audio issues aside from a slight crackle here and there. It had bad audio when the card was in the system raw and I hadn’t installed updated drivers, but was fine after the drivers were in. I just don’t know, man.

You didn't specify if you checked the ISA bus timing / clock settings in your BIOS, nor if you reduced the hardware acceleration for sound in Windows.
Edit: How this might play into it - the delay set for the ISA bus plays a more critical role when the CPU is free to do more, ie. when your graphics are accelerated like with OpenGL. When you're running in software mode, the CPU is more busy and thus the timing for the ISA card is less crucial.

When in Software mode, the game’s audio is mostly fine despite the heavier load put on the CPU

Just a theory, not despite but because.

Would be nice to rule those out, even if your video card drivers (and potentially a third party service pack for Win98) are starting to seem like enticing options to pursue.

I tried lowering the hardware accelerated sound to Basic and ran another test using OpenGL. It did not appreciably change anything.

As for ISA bus timings, I don’t seem to know where to look or if this BIOS even has a feature to monitor it. This is an Award BIOS, version SS for this specific motherboard.

EDIT: found the feature mentioned. 16-bit I/O Recovery Time is set to 1.

Have you tried with hardware sound acceleration set to "No acceleration"?

This motherboard has two ISA slots. Can you try putting the AWE64 in the other slot? I'm wondering if the one it's in now is a shared PCI/ISA slot and that could be causing some issues somehow.

Also, you mentioned planning to install a 512MB RAM stick in this motherboard. This is a 440BX chipset and 512MB sticks will likely be recognized at half-capacity (256MB) by this chipset unless they are low-density (which I think are either extremely rare or basically non-existent). If you are in the US, I have 3x256MB PC133 CL3 RAM sticks I'd be happy to give to you.