Playing Music Slows Vista Network Performance?

An anonymous reader writes "Over the months since Vista's release, there has been no doubt about the reduced level of network performance experienced compared to Windows XP. However, some users over at the 2CPU forums have discovered an unexplained connection with audio playback resulting in a cap at approximately 5%-10% of total network throughput. Whenever any audio is being sent to a sound card (even, several users report, while paused), network performance is instantly reduced. As soon as the audio is stopped, the throughput begins to climb to its expected speed. It's a tough one for users — what do you pick, sound or speed? So much for multi-tasking."

Comments

Re:What do I pick?

[ashground]

If I used Vista [...] Funny how so many people with gripes against Vista are yelling from the sidelines without any first-hand experience.

I've never noticed a drop in network speed when playing audio. Nor does Vista crash on me. Nor have I had any driver issues. My Vista experience has been wonderful and painless, and from talking to other people, it seems like that's the case nine times out of ten. Of course there are bugs -- when you write an operating system taking several billion possible computer configurations into account, at some point something's not going to line up. That doesn't make the operating system worthless. And trust me, in all my years of running Windows, 3.0 to Vista, I've never come as close to throwing my computer out the window as I have trying to maintain any Linux distribution.

Vista's not perfect, but I'd still gladly choose it over any OS that forces me to compile things myself to get things working properly or buy an entirely new set of hardware just to run it.