Alsa Problems with nforce4 AC97

["Mike" <spam@mdobbs.com>]

i'm using the intel driver with my gigabyte nforce4 board.  Sound is usually 
ok, but.

1.  /dev/dsp only allows one process.  I thought alsa dmixed this?
2.  I get alsa-space: xrun of at least 0.135 msecs. resetting stream when 
using mplayer
3.  esound runs very badly, crashes when i turn it on in sound preferences 
in gnome.
4. totem-gstreamer is out of sync when playing mp4/mp3 videos.


I've tried setting multimedia system to esd, oss, and alsa with no avail. 
The only fix I found for mplayer was to use -ao alsa:mmap

Any ideas?  I'm using the latest sid.

thanks