Audigy 2 slowing down my system .!!?

I have an Asus A7V266-E mobo with an AMD XP-2400 CPU running Windows XP professional. Even since I installed a new Audigy 2 yesterday, I've noticed a 500 point reduction
in the SisSoftware Sandra CPU Arithmetic Benchmark, from 7500 to 7000 points .. similar reduction in the Multimedia
benchmark.

When I remove the card, performance jumps back to 7500. I've tried moving card around my PCI slots to make sure
IRQ lines aren't being shared .. but to no avail.

Has anyone else noticed a reduction in CPU benchmark numbers after an Audigy 2 installation ?... 'cause it doesn't make sense for it to effect the CPU results. I've confirmed a similar reduction running other benchmarks such as PCMark2002 and 3DMark2001.

Hope it's not a compatibility issue with the VIA KT266A
chipset I have on board .. have no problem with the sound
quality though .. it's great.

Anyone with an explanation as to what I've observed ??

BTW .. I tried disabling EAX support and stuff thru the Audigy driver which I thought might consume CPU resource, but it's not made a difference.

Thanks ..

I've read this article before .. interestingly enough, my
results seem to be the opposite of what the article concludes .. in the article, the Audigy 2 beats the
C-media CM18738 in terms of FPS .. in my case though, I
get better benchmark results with my on-board CMI8738 .. go figure !!