aleader Posted July 19, 2003 Share Posted July 19, 2003 Anyone else having problems with severe crackly\popping sound? I have an SBLive, Radeon 9000Pro, XP Pro - DX 9.0a, Athlon 900 T-Bird. I have all the newest chipset, video, and sound drivers installed. I've also tried all the settings in my CMOS, lowering hardware acceleration, turning off ambient sounds...nothing works. It gets really bad with lots of fire\smoke on the map, and the framerates become unplayable at the same time. I'm also having issues with 2 maps in Ghost Recon (Island Thunder - thunder\lightning map), MTW freezing on exit (it has to do with disabling hardware sound mixing), and IL-2 (same problems as CMBB - framerates, crackling\popping). For some reason, disabling Smoothvision in the ATI control panel mostly solves the sound problem in CMBB, but not other games. I also noticed that my sound card and vidoe card are sharing (?) IRQ 5, but the option to change them is greyed over. Any help? [ July 19, 2003, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: aleader ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted July 19, 2003 Share Posted July 19, 2003 I would think the shared IRQ could be causing the problem. Try moving the sound card to a different physical slot and see if that will allow you to change the IRQ. On some motherboards various slots are assigned certain IRQ's but you really dont want the video and sound shared like that. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarDogz Posted July 19, 2003 Share Posted July 19, 2003 something's not right if your video card is using IRQ 5, should be using IRQ's at 10 or above. If it were me I would be considering moving hardware around (PCI slots) and even a new OS install. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aleader Posted July 20, 2003 Author Share Posted July 20, 2003 Well, I tried physically moving the sound card (one slot over) and it did change the IRQ to 12, but it also automatically changed the Video Card IRQ to 12, and I still can't change either of them manually (it's still greyed out). Is there some setting in XP somewhere that allows you to change these things? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Jerkov Posted July 20, 2003 Share Posted July 20, 2003 Originally posted by aleader: Well, I tried physically moving the sound card (one slot over) and it did change the IRQ to 12, but it also automatically changed the Video Card IRQ to 12, and I still can't change either of them manually (it's still greyed out). Is there some setting in XP somewhere that allows you to change these things? I believe in BIOS you can change your IRQ's, if it is available for your version of BIOS(whatever that may be). Also, check in your systems page to verify if their is even a conflict... if their isnt I guess its still worth a shot. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aleader Posted July 20, 2003 Author Share Posted July 20, 2003 It lists no conflicts, but I can't imagine why they would both need to share the same IRQ. In any event, I should be able to change the settings if I wish. Something just doesn't seem right. I just finished pulling BOTH cards, only putting the Video card back in, installing the video drivers, etc., and then I put the sound card back in, and it still assigned the sound card to the same IRQ (12) as the video card. I've looked through my CMOS settings, but I can't find anything obvious in there. I'm using an ABIT KT7 with the newest BIOS. I'm at a total loss here... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Jerkov Posted July 20, 2003 Share Posted July 20, 2003 Gah... Have you reinstalled DirectX ?.* since you've reinstalled the cards and drivers? You probaly have, just an idea... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aleader Posted July 20, 2003 Author Share Posted July 20, 2003 Yes, I did that already, and did all of the Windows Updates. My brother-in-law had an interesting suggestion. He thinks it may be the jumper settings on either the sound card or MB. That's what I'll try next when I get a chance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 21, 2003 Share Posted July 21, 2003 The 'crackling & popping' with SB (Live, Audigy and some of the earlier PCI SBs) cards is a known problem with certain chipsets. Usually the VIA chipsets have this problem, but several other chipsets have also experienced it, but VIA is the most common. PCI Latency (increasing it ?) may help with the problem a bit. Supposedly some BIOS updates and the latest drivers (chipset and audio) may help, but there's no guaranteed/universal solution. You can try out the VIA PCI Latency Patch (3rd party software) and see if it helps, however with the latest drivers it may not do much. It's possible that some video cards may exacerbate the problem and that may be the case here with the ATI. There may be no solution other than to replace your SB with another sound card such as a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. When it comes to changing IRQs, it can be an almost impossible process. You do have to delete the card installation and all drivers (including editing the registry). At that point you can move the card to a different slot, but you may want to look through your documentation to find out how IRQs are assigned to the PCI slots. You're typically limited to 4 IRQs for your PCI and AGP devices, which include any on-board sound (which isn't applicable to your situation here) USB (which may take two IRQs, depending on your motherboard and how many USB controllers it has) and any other onboard devices (IDE RAID, etc.). Often the slot closest to the AGP card will share an IRQ automatically with the AGP slot. If you have more than 4 PCI slots, then some of the slots may share IRQs together or with other devices onboard. Some BIOSs (as mentioned earlier) are capable of assigning specific IRQs to specific PCI slots, but you're still limited to 4 IRQs. However these are very uncommon and most motherboards don't allow you to do this. Instead your motherboard documentation may mention the IRQs assigned to each PCI slot as INT#A, INT#B, etc. Try to find a slot that doesn't share an IRQ with anything else and/or is the furthest away from the AGP card (to make sure it isn't interfering electrically with the sound card). If you have 5 PCI slots, often the 4th & 5th PCI slots will share an IRQ together. [ July 20, 2003, 10:07 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aleader Posted July 22, 2003 Author Share Posted July 22, 2003 Schrullenhaft: you're a god!! I applied the VIA latency patch and voila, sound fixed! I'd heard of the patch before, but didn't realize that it was a sound fix. They also have another file that disables the Turbo mode on the SB cards if the patch doesn't fix the problem. It's like having a whole new computer! Thanks for all the tips everyone! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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