i've read here and there that game pauses could be driver related, hardware, blah, blah, but you would think that there would be some sort of fix. this mostly happens when i play sof2. i guess it's due to punkbuster, but am not sure. i got A LOT of pauses while i was playing dungeon seige also. funny thing is i never got ANY of these pauses with my old hp retail and my current rig is just such a better machine. wtf? what are some things i need to look into for a fix? can this be fixed? i've heard that it's cuz i use an ati card with nforce chipset...no? as for the ver of nforce i'm using i have to use the 2.45's. if i use anything newer i lose 5.1. anyway, i've also tried newer nforce drivers and they didn't help. thx for any input!