Creative Sound Card Problem Thread

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Hi Bloke

Yes...winzip

Just a homage

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hey all. new here did a search and this seems best place to post

did a fresh install of the RC earlier multiple times

with each isntall tried 3 different driver sets
1. beta drivers from creative for win 7.
2. Vista drivers from creative
3. Daniel K pack 1.1

All 3 gave the same issues. In all cases, my sound, after about 1 second of playing anything, cuts out. Only sound that remains is opening a folder etc. No mp3, video, game, flash works.

Info:

Windows 7 RC x64
Creative X-Fi Platinum
Asus p5n32 sli se deluxe
evga 8800gtx
4gb ddr2 800

Any ideas at all? Just want it to stop cutting out atm and then ill look into the crackling.

daisuke149 said:

hey all. new here did a search and this seems best place to post

did a fresh install of the RC earlier multiple times

with each isntall tried 3 different driver sets
1. beta drivers from creative for win 7.
2. Vista drivers from creative
3. Daniel K pack 1.1

All 3 gave the same issues. In all cases, my sound, after about 1 second of playing anything, cuts out. Only sound that remains is opening a folder etc. No mp3, video, game, flash works.

Info:

Windows 7 RC x64
Creative X-Fi Platinum
Asus p5n32 sli se deluxe
evga 8800gtx
4gb ddr2 800

Any ideas at all? Just want it to stop cutting out atm and then ill look into the crackling.

Welcome, Daisuke.

This is sad news indeed. I've been holding out hope that this problem would have been rectified in the 64-bit RC and a clean install would put this problem in our rear view mirror.

Unfortunately, your motherboard uses the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset. There are known, long-standing issues with PCI bus latencies that affect Creative X-Fi soundcards (see my post here). These issues have been somehow exacerbated in Windows 7, expecially when more than 2GB of system RAM is installed and available to the OS (see my post here).

I will test the RC tomorrow once I get an official download and I will post my results and any new workarounds I might discover here and on the Creative Labs forum.

Dale

P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

dsopocy said:

Welcome, Daisuke.

This is sad news indeed. I've been holding out hope that this problem would have been rectified in the 64-bit RC and a clean install would put this problem in our rear view mirror.

Unfortunately, your motherboard uses the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset. There are known, long-standing issues with PCI bus latencies that affect Creative X-Fi soundcards (see my post here). These issues have been somehow exacerbated in Windows 7, expecially when more than 2GB of system RAM is installed and available to the OS (see my post here).

I will test the RC tomorrow once I get an official download and I will post my results and any new workarounds I might discover here and on the Creative Labs forum.

Dale

P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

thanks for the response Dale. yeah it does seem unfortunate. Im also at a point where upgrading my motherboard, while nice, isnt feasable at this time. I was hoping that the issue was with Nvidia 8 series graphics cards instead, as I had a Radeon hd 4850 laying around.

Do you by chance know if this issue affects any other sound boards? I could perhaps revert back to my on board sound and just lay the platinum to rest somewhere.

The crackling/popping issue i had in vista, most people said were related to the graphics card and the nvidia drivers for it, not a specific motherboard chipset. Wondering if that was perhaps untrue, or speculation.

Again sorry for the questions being new, but heading to china in 4 days, finals next few days, im finding myself short in time to research this myself in depth.

daisuke149 said:

thanks for the response Dale. yeah it does seem unfortunate. Im also at a point where upgrading my motherboard, while nice, isnt feasable at this time. I was hoping that the issue was with Nvidia 8 series graphics cards instead, as I had a Radeon hd 4850 laying around.

Do you by chance know if this issue affects any other sound boards? I could perhaps revert back to my on board sound and just lay the platinum to rest somewhere.

The crackling/popping issue i had in vista, most people said were related to the graphics card and the nvidia drivers for it, not a specific motherboard chipset. Wondering if that was perhaps untrue, or speculation.

Again sorry for the questions being new, but heading to china in 4 days, finals next few days, im finding myself short in time to research this myself in depth.

This problem definitely results from the combination of an nForce4 chipset on the motherboard and a Creative X-Fi sound card (while the problem can be manifested by graphics card bus requests, the graphics card/drivers are not the root cause). The technical explanation is contained in the white paper referenced in the posts linked in my response to your initial post. Your only known workarounds at present (unless and until someone finds another) are to change soundcards (onboard sound should also work) or limit your system RAM as described in my previously linked post, unless you are fortunate to have a BIOS that allows you to control bus settings.

Dale

P.S.
Please remember to click on icon above this posting and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

ok. I used the msconfig setup to set RAM to 2gb.

and sound works Perfect. no crackling, no issues, full control etc.

BUT. i need another way to fix this. 2gb ram isnt enough. I tend to always multitask, while playing my game, WoW. and its considerably slower with 2gb memory.

I need to check if my bios allows adjusting the settings in depth and see how that goes.

dsopocy said:

This problem definitely results from the combination of an nForce4 chipset on the motherboard and a Creative X-Fi sound card

Unfortunatly.. not only

Audigy + Intel chipset (EP45) for me and I have the same issue.

Hope that RC will fix the problem (D/L in progress )