Snap,Crackle And Pop!

[jgf]

I learned this tinkering with XP so have no idea if it's even pertinent to Vista or W7.  OTOH, if you're curious enough, try setting the vid card to 96 or 128 and see if that affects sound (it's possible the vid card is fighting for time with a sound card that has priority and the constant "interruptions" are causing audio problems).

You can't hurt anything tweaking latency, the worst that happens is performance suffers.

[Strategic Retreat]

I would have tried something akin to that on my own, had PCI Latency Tool given me a clear shot at the video card, but maybe because it was not thought for Nvidia chipsets like the one my MB has, matter compounded perhaps by my using a Nvidia video card on it too, it only gave me a good idea of how to manipulate the audio card, the USB array and the IDE and SATA interface... could not discern a clear cut reference to the video card to opportunely try and manipulate matters if not for exclusion, and using that yardstick would have been a poor way to make my way through that bog. :-/

[jgf]

A little extra reading divulged that latency with PCI-E cards isn't as much of an issue as it was with PCI or AGP, so many latency tools don't provide an option for it (it isn't a matter of chipsets, latency is written to registry memory during windows start and is independent of vid card, driver, chipsets, etc.).  Some driver tweak utilities have options for adjusting latency  (ATi TrayTools provides this, though I've never had need of it ...knock on wood).