New i9-13900K build got audio pops and crackles in CS2, anyone else?

[Jack Reed]

Just finished building my new rig around the i9-13900K and honestly the gameplay is great, but my audio is a mess in competitive shooters. During intense firefights in CS2 I get these little pops and crackles, and the footsteps sound all jittery like they’re stuttering. It’s killing me in ranked because I rely on positional audio to call out enemy positions, and the popping happens right when the action ramps up. I already bumped my Sound Blaster buffer to 512 and disabled most background apps, but it still happens sporadically in the middle of rounds.

What’s weird is it’s totally fine while watching YouTube or playing a single-player game with nobody around, but as soon as there’s a 64-player mess of sound on screen it falls apart. My headphones are wired straight into the sound card, drivers are latest, and Windows spatial sound is off since I use the in-game HRTF. I’ve read somewhere that this new CPU has those hybrid P-core and E-core setups and maybe audio threads are landing on the wrong cores, but I have no idea how to even check that. Anyone dealt with audio stuttering on a 13th-gen chip in competitive games?

"[Gear: Endgame Gear OP1 8k] • [Display: ASUS PG248QP 540Hz]"

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