I have a PC and a PS3 for gaming. The other night I wanted to play Shogun 2, so I booted it up and there was some problem with the sound cutting out all the time. Anyway, I tried to locate the problem and after checking everythin I decided I needed to find an update for my sound driver.
I went to the Asus site and grabbed the official driver. I then thought that it might be wise to update my graphics driver as it hadn't been done in a while so I did that too.
After installing them I eagerly booted the game back up only to find that the problem with the sound hadn't gone away. I tried it on tropico 3 and then on Just Cause 2 and the problem was also there too. I opened up my PC and reseated all the parts. Asus Xonar DG - checked and blown for dust and reseated as was the 5890 and the 8gb DDR3. Rebooted. Same problem.
I then found out about some unofficial sound card drivers. I tried them and they worked! Hooray! Now I can game (three hours later).
As I started the game it crashed to desktop - again and again. Damn it! So I rolled back my graphics drivers. Same problem.
I must have reseated something wrong.
So I did all that again, making sure to get everything right. Once I was satisfied, I started the PC back up. Same damn problem. So I uninstalled the graphics drivers fully and started again, reinstalling the new ones.
This time it worked. Between doing all that and searching the net for solutions, making tea and banging my head against a wall, four and a half hours had passed.
Yeah, PC gaming rocks.