Need some quick driver help  

Hello everyone! I decided to make an account here, because i have a driver issue i just cannot fix. I am a techie..but this is driving me insane! I am using an AMD Phenom x4 965 black edition, 4Gb DDR3 Corsair RAM, Asus Crosshair III mobo, with the awesome sound card that comes with it. I am noticing an issue where my sound wont stay at a stable level, and when i adjust my sound via controller *I am running a 7.1 surround sound, ran straight to the soundcard, the sub has a hard wired volume/bass control* I have had these speakers for quite some time now..so i know its not a hardware issue. If i turn the volume up as slowly as possible, it gets VERY loud, then very quiet...the problem seems to be drivers. When i check Hardware Device Manager, It has two sound drivers installed. One of them is "High Defenition Audio Device" Which is the proper one. However, when i reboot Windows automatically loads AMD High Defenition Audio Device. Initially, I assumed the AMD one was the correct one because AMD produces a good portion of my computer. When i disable the AMD driver, sound still works. When i disable the generic driver, sound stops working. When i disable the AMD, or uninstall the AMD, the problem persists. Likely because the driver is still loaded, and I don't know how to unload it. Uninstalling it and rebooting would be the best option, however Windows immediately reinstalls the driver on bootup. I would GREATLY appreciate any help anyone could provide. Generally i like to tinker around until i get it fixed, so i can learn a bit more...but this problem just keeps occurring and i just cant get it. Thank you in advance to anyone who can try and help, if theres any more information i can provide, please let me know.

Janedoe, welcome to the Seven Forums.

The AMD audio device would be the audio chip that is built into the HD 5770 video card for audio over HDMI. The "high definition audio device" on the other hand means that the onboard sound from the motherboard is using the default Windows audio driver, and not the proper driver for it. For that motherboard you have to get the driver from Asus,

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Motherboards- ASUS Crosshair III Formula

You need both the SoundMax driver and the X-Fi Utility.

P.S. For what it is worth what you think of as a sound card actually isn't, it is nothing more than a riser card that has the onboard audio on it instead of somewhere on the motherboard. It will not work on any other motherboard as a sound card.

Thank you so much! For some reason i couldn't find this information anywhere else. Also, I'm a techie in training, so i appreciate the explanation of the card. I realized that it wasn't a stand alone sound card, and that it wouldn't work on any other board, but i didn't really understand the specifics of it. Thanks so much!