Popping sound while within the race in Top Gear 3000..?

[adventure_of_link]

Specs:

Windows XP home SP3 (32-bits)
Intel Celeron 2.7GHz
Snes9X v1.53 (latest test build IIRC)

NSRT Info of the game in question:

Code: Select all

NSRT v3.3 - Nach's SNES ROM Tools

---------------------Internal ROM Info----------------------
       File: Top Gear 3000.smc
       Name: TOP GEAR 3000          Company: Kemco
     Header: GD3                       Bank: LoROM
Interleaved: No                        SRAM: 0 Kb
       Type: DSP-4                      ROM: 8 Mb
    Country: USA                      Video: NTSC
  ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM)       Revision: 1.0
   Checksum: Good 0x5327              CRC32: A20BE998
--------------------------Database--------------------------
   Name: Top Gear 3000
Country: USA                    Revision: 1.0
 Port 1: Gamepad                  Port 2: The Multitap
Genre 1: Racing                  Genre 2: Street

The problem:

While in a race, any race, the sound keeps making this rapid popping noise. it doesn't happen in the title screen, menus, etc.

My Windows 7 notebook which is 64-bits and using 64-bit Snes9X doesn't exhibit this problem.

Anyone help?

[odditude]

celeron or celeron D? what audio hardware?

if it's a "vanilla" celeron, it wouldn't surprise me if snes9x is thrashing the anemic-for-Northwood 128k cache. if this is the case, it should only be reproducible on other Willamette-128 and Northwood-128 celerons.

(netburst / P4 needs at least 256k per core to not regularly choke on itself, which is why the original s478 celerons were such horrible stinkers.)